Monster Soft Sculptures Part I

This was probably the most difficult to teach but most fun project I have done with my 6th grade students. This project took approximately 6 class times to complete. I had the idea for this project based on the "Ugly Dolls" that I've seen in gift shops here and there. I was also inspired to teach this project because my school eliminated it's FACS and Industrial Tech classes and I've had many students asking me when they will get to learn how to sew.

This project cost around $200 for the supplies. That came to around $1 per student, which I thought was reasonable, considering the time they spent working on them. I got a jumbo box of 20 lbs of stuffing from Nasco art supplies for around $32. The felt was about 25 cents per sheet. The glue sticks were the most expensive part. I already had a lot of buttons and extra decorating materials.

For this project, I taught over 200 6th graders how to sew in two class times. It was a lot of work, but I'll give you some pointers if you want to give it a go.

Tips for this project:

• Cut & tie the knots in the crochet thread or yarn before having kids sew. Tying the knots was extremely difficult for some kids and ended up being a major waste of time. I learned the hard way....it was so much easier to just tie the knots for them!
• Stress that each student gets one piece of felt-- no more, no less. I let the students who were most respectful when I was talking at the beginning of class choose their color of felt first.
• Have lots of ribbons, buttons, and odds/ends for students to use to decorate their monster
• You will use lots of hot glue if using it to glue on decorations. I went through 8 bags of 50 glue sticks with 200 6th graders.

Organize & keep track of sewing needles by sticking them in a piece of scrap foam board. Label each needle with a # and assign each student a #. This worked pretty well!

Don't buy store-bought needle threaders. They break very easily (as I learned the hard way). You can easily make your own with the thinnest jewelry wire you can buy, some scrap mat board or card board, and glue. These needle threaders saved so much time and the kids thought they were magic!