Haberdashery

I am a believer that if you start with beautiful materials then the final project will too be beautiful. In our haberdashery class, for ages 6-9,  we didn't actually do any sewing. It was mostly gluing both hot gluing and regular starting with beautiful materials to make glorious, playful hats.

We used  sensory materials like plaster or shaving cream and glue as well as familiar materials like plastic flowers, duct tape or pieces of jewelry that I pick up at flea markets ( this is always a favorite with the children,  just looking through the big jar of shiny jewelry to see what they can find). 

We made cake hats, and flower hats and feathered hats and fruit hats and top hats.

The kids would be giddy with delight when they saw the materials on that table for their choosing. It was difficult to hold them back so we could choose fairly and with a bit of order. 

Fabrics, plastic flowers, butterflies, beads, feathers and ribbon.

Look at these gorgeous velvet flowers that I actually found at a thrift store, bags of them.

We used berry baskets as our base for the smaller hats and cardboard as the base for the larger hats.

It was delightful to watch them working out ideas with the materials, discussing if this should be added or if this was too much ( It was almost never too much). The children would draw out ideas, but usually those ideas would change and evolve as they began to work with the materials. 

On the last day of class we invited family and friends together and performed a fashion show with make up and music. We practiced our walks, both slow and fast.  We asked questions. Would each hat have a different walk? Which hat might have a slow walk and which one a faster one or a twirl?

What a fantastic ending to the haberdashery class with no sewing.