Hello, Jan,
last weekend I had my fifth morsbag making event and can tell you about some experiences.
Children: I have actually sewn with 4-year-olds – they are very sweet and I just couldn’t turn them away. But, oh boy, did I have to look out for my fingers or they’d have sewn them straight onto the bag. After 2 such experiences I decided that all children must be accompanied by an adult who actually sits next to them and watches what the kids are doing.
In my experience children can sew quite well from the age of 10. But possibly I was just lucky to have kids there who knew what they were doing!
Showing morsbags : I used Beatties “security” systemof sliding bags over a bit of rope and fastening them with pegs. That worked rather well! Thank you!
After the actual sewing I handed out photocopied instructions on how to make morsbags for future morsbags projects. The German pod “Duisbags” made up German ones which are absolutely wonderful.
But what noone can prepare you for are the pitfalls such as “funny” people. One lady came up to us with a bag she had in her possession (not a morsbag). It was too long for her liking and she wanted it altered to suit her needs. I had to become very assertive and told her that we’d make morsbags first and IF there was time and someone who volunteered maybe we’d take care of her bag. (She was handicapped and couldn’t sew by herself.) The morsbaggers rose to terrific heights and devised a clever plan how to alter this bag. When one machine couldn’t sew through the thick material, another morsbagger took over. This was great but gave us the clever idea of organizing cards from the local alteration service to hand out to such “customers” next time.
One lady, a repeat-morsbagger, asked whether we could teach something different next time. Clearly she got a bit bored by always the same pattern! So, I told her about a fabric shop that has sewing classes. Maybe I should get their cards as well?
People always find it hard to understand that morsbags and morsbags workshops are FREE. They alsways want to donate money, fabric, thread, anything at all to show their gratitude. So, for my next events I had the idea of imitating Jamie Oliver with his “pass-it-on pledge”. He gave cookery classes and urged participants to teach this dish to a specified number people, who in turn should teach it to as many people. This way knowledge would spread.
Do you have stories of unexpected behaviour from visitors? They would be entertaining but also a good preparation for future morsbags events.
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