Heather Norman organised a team of fabulous ladies to come down to the Museum and teach the children the forgotten crafts. Learning these crafts also gave the children a good lesson in reduce, reuse and recycling.
Zhanna Shcherbich taught the group wet felting and explained the importance of using less plastics. The group made beautiful felts shapes, from hearts to stars, for bars of soap to sit on, an eco-friendlier alternative to buying bottles of soap.
Margo Smallwood showed the group how to spool spin on two types of spinning wheels with Falklands wool. Margo is very skilled at taking cleaned wool, spinning it then knitting with the wool to create a garment. It was fantastic for the children to learn these skills and carry on in the future as this truly is a forgotten craft.
Emma Brook taught the group how to create rag mats, a tradition which is dying out unless we learn to start reusing materials such as old clothes & hessian bags. It is very important that we don’t just throw everything away and make good use of all the materials around us.
Heather Norman taught the group how to create English patch work hexagonal shape. She used fabric from old dresses to create beautiful quilts. The group took home the lovely creations they had carefully sewn, their concentration was amazing!
Fantastic work created on a very sunny day! Thank you to all involved, you are all very talented and everyone learned a lot. Hopefully the group will carry on with the old traditions and make you all very proud.
Falkland Islands Museum & National Trust
Historic Dockyard Museum - Stanley - Falkland Islands