Our Design and Technology project this half term is to design and make a pouch as we are learning about textiles. We began by looking closely at our clothes and sharing ideas about how we thought our clothes are made. This created a great deal of discussion and we looked around the classroom thinking of things that could have been made in the same way. The children thought back to prior knowledge about joining materials when I asked them to consider how they had joined the materials they used when making their moon buggies last term. They impressed me with their understanding as they remembered the different ways they had joined the wood, cardboard and paper but then decided that wouldn't be suitable for joining fabric. 

Very quickly the children decided that pieces of fabric needed to be joined by thread and sewn together as sellotape or glue would wash off in the washing machine and staples would scratch them! However we did investigate other ways of joining materials; velcro, buttons and zips.

We also had a really good discussion about different types of material. They were curious to know where cotton came from so we searched the internet and watched a short video showing cotton being harvested from a field and then processed in a factory. They were very surprised to learn it came from a plant! 

 

Then we talked about types of stitches that can be used and decided that the simple running stitch was the most suitable for our pouches. The children have been practising a running stitch over the past few weeks by using threading cards and perfecting the action of moving the thread up and down through the card. Now they get the chance to use their skills with material!

 

I explained that we they would be using felt for their pouches and they looked at pieces of cotton, compared it to the felt and decided why it was a better choice. Then after choosing the colour of felt they wanted they began cutting out the back and front of their pouch using a template to guide them. 

 

DT stitches