Heart Knit Together #39: Renaissance Embroidery Part 3 -- Final Amazing Projects by Teenagers

This is the final part in my Renaissance Embroidery Series. You can find the first two parts here:

Part 1: History of Embroidery during Renaissance Period

The embroidery class I was teaching at my daughter's school is over now. I got some positive responses from students and their parents. One mom told me she had borrowed indefinitely the wool bookmark that her son had made in the class. :)

In one of the classes we talked about the different materials that people would embroider during that time period. I brought samples to touch of cotton, muslin, silk, satin, velvet, and wool fabric. I was surprised by how many of the students had never touched these fabrics. My mother is a seamstress so she made all the prom and wedding dresses for my sisters and I. I felt like I was always familiar with these nice fabrics but maybe not. Silk and velvet were definitely a favorite among the students.

They had an opportunity to embroider on wool felt. My friend from college, Heather, designed this great bookmark, and a few of the students used that idea to make their own. Unfortunately the really good ones, the students wanted to take home right away so I didn't get pictures of them! But I have the green one that a boy did his initials on and the elephant that my oldest, Adelle, embroidered. I really love the fantastic job she did!

Most of the students spent the last few weeks finishing their original work on muslin. Our school has an art stroll in April so we had these on display there. Unfortunately they were left up over the weekend, when it rained a lot, and there was a leak right above this table. So all the projects got soaked. My daughter called, all upset about it, I tried to console her that all the fabrics could be washed, but they ended up drying out and looking fine anyway, just the frames were ruined. The worse part was that I had purchased the cheap frames from the thrift store and quickly framed the pieces a few days before the stroll, rather shoddily really. And since they had to take all the frames apart to dry the embroidery, everyone got to see what a bad framing job I did! Crap. I wasn't really planning on anyone actually looking inside the frame. :( Oh well. It was time and money constraints.

I've been a bit stressed about Adelle's schooling this year. School choice is good but it can be stressful. When you just send your child to the neighborhood school you don't think much about it. But when you have choices between schools you then have to decide what is best for your student. I don't think that school choice is good for public school in general because the students who can, will go to better schools, leaving those struggling schools, struggling even more because they are often left with low achieving, uninvolved families. But we still chose to send our girls to this charter school because when school started we didn't have a place to live yet, hence no neighborhood school, and I really like the philosophy of this school district charter school. However, there have been several things at her school that I was not pleased about (a lot of time spent on non-academic stuff, really disorganized, teacher's making inappropriate comments in class, and teaching things as scientific fact that are just theories, to name a few). Joel and I talked about putting her in the neighborhood junior high but had kind of decided not to since she was so happy at her current school.

But a few weeks ago she came and told us that she felt like she was getting dumber there and thought she needed to be challenged more academically. This was after the open enrollment was closed for the district, leaving us with the neighborhood junior high or the neighborhood K-8 school. I spent some time trying to work the bureaucratic system of the school district to get her into the gifted program that she participating in prior to moving here. It was stressful and I was anxious about doing the right thing for her. We ultimately enrolled her in that program in the junior high. I'd been praying about the decision and feeling like that was the right choice but still feeling really anxious. Junior high age sucks. I just didn't want her to experience all the crappiness of that age and time. All the insecurity. Everything. But after she enrolled I finally felt peace, like we are doing the right thing. I don't know how I could make decisions about life or parenting without the guidance of the Holy Ghost. I'm so thankful that God cares about the little details of our lives and directs us. We just need to ask and then listen.

Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you. -Matthew 7:7

We are leaving Maeve at the current school. She is doing really well, enjoys our weekly involvement there, and I like how the younger grades are run. It is very organized, lots of small groups and hands on learning. She got to write and publish her own fairy tale this year. It was titled, "The Three Eggs and the Big Bad Bacon." I asked her where she came up with the idea and she said it has been floating around in her head and she's wanted to write it for awhile. I love that. She is such a fun, creative soul. She is sad Adelle won't be at the same school as her next year. It won't be fun having kids in different schools. But the best news is that Adelle can take the bus! She seems excited about it and I am thrilled that I won't be trying to drive in 2 different directions in the mornings. Yeah!

Happy Monday!

Labels: embroidery, Hearts Knit Together