This is what I made...
What are they, you ask? They are vendor aprons for my daughter and her friend to wear at their Gladfest craft booth next weekend. They are makers and specialize in miniature clay charms like these...
I used this as an inspiration...just a simple Lowe's tool belt.
The girls will be using the aprons to hold supplies, phones, and their earnings. There are six total pockets as there are also pockets on the inside of the apron. Because this was something I had never made before, I had to spend some time in the last week and a half thinking about how I was going to make them so they would turn out as I imagined them in my brain. I had to figure out the pocket situation and how I was going to put the two sides together. What I realized this morning as a sat down at my sewing machine (thanks mom for the amazing Bernina hand me down) that my thinking time drastically cut the time I had to spend in my studio. Because I had problem-solved some things ahead of time, I was able to finish the aprons in about 2 hours!
As I was working and thinking about the making process, I began thinking about how I became a maker. My mom lead me down her path of making. My mom is an artist. An honest-to-goodness, true, creative, wild and crazy artist who earned a living by teaching junior high art and later became a gifted teacher. She was and still is always sewing, crafting, selling, exhibiting, or learning something new. She is part of a quilt guild and a rug hooking group, she teaches art classes to elementary kids at an art gallery in my hometown, and she has been an artist in residence in a small Nebraska town. She is my inspiration. From her I learned that I can do anything I set my mind to!
I learned to sew in junior high from an amazingly patient Home Economics teacher named Jan Cook. Can you imagine teaching 30 teenagers how to sew at one time?! Yikes! I have sewing machines in my MakerSpace but I only have plans to have small groups of kids learn to sew at one time....like 5!
I have been making for years! Holiday decorations, Halloween costumes, creating Pinterest projects for my school library, and painting and repurposing furniture. Throughout these endeavors, something ALWAYS goes wrong. Paint won't stick, threads get twisted, I measure something wrong. The one thing that I have learned through all of these experiences is that when I run into a problem, I HAVE to figure out some way to solve it. I always tell my students that any problem can be solved, it just may not be the original way you thought it would be solved.
This is what my studio at home looks like. It is always a bit messy (just like my mom's) but it has almost everything I would ever need for a new project. It is MY MakerSpace!
It was only natural that my library would have a MakerSpace.
I want my students to look back and think, I was a maker at school when I learned to ______(fill in the blank). Creating, making, designing is a great way to spend free time, express yourself, and save a little money along the way.
Many of my students are already makers. They send me photos of what they have created, bring me examples of what they invented, or they share what they are going home to make. Some of my students have even set up MakerSpaces in their rooms or basements.
Not all kids or adults like to make. That is why my library program is a mix of making, reading, and thinking. Some kids have a passion for reading and wondering.
So, think about your weekend or the past week. What did you make, create, or build?
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