During our History and Geography learning we have been exploring the lives of Native American peoples so we decided to combine this with our learning in DT about combining materials and create an epic patchwork Teepee. We asked our local community for old bed linen and fabric scraps to recycle and we began practising our sewing machine skills. We all had a go at sewing and patch-working in this project from Year 1 to Year 6.
Most of us had only used sewing machines once before so we had to first practice threading it up and practising stitching in straight lines. We found it easier especially with the KS1 children to use Janome XL601 machines as they have an automatic stitch feature which means there is no need to use the pedal you can simply set the speed and focus on feeding the fabrics through nice and neatly.
After mastering our stitching skills it was time to assemble our patchwork panels. Finally we sawed our branches to the right length and we were ready to erect our teepee!
We ran this project as a non uniform full Art/DT day and we stitched our socks off all day to finish our teepee in one day ready for story time inside it at the end of the day! We were really lucky to have support in the classroom from two extra parent helpers for this project day.
As this project was during the winter we temporarily set our Teepee up in the classroom but as the weather is getting warmer our teepee has become a fairly permanent feature of our school playground!
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