| Children to pick and choose among one-day crafts camps in Madison MADISON - The Museum of Early Trades and Crafts, 9 Main St. at Green Village Road in Madison, will host eight unique one-day summer camps for children 4 through 12 in July and August. recordernewspapers.com |
How-To: One Hour Bag My crafting time has been in a serious crunch this summer, so a quick project like this one hour bag from Skip to my Lou is right up my alley. I especially love the fabric-covered button embellishment on the straps. With a sewing project this fast, you could whip up a purse wardrobe in no time! Read the Full Story » | More on CRAFT » | Comments » | Read more articles in Sewing | Digg this! blog.craftzine.com |
Awesome Toddler Droid Dresses For Star Wars Celebration I followed last weekend's Star Wars Celebration closely (What? Isn't it obvious I'm a big Star Wars geek?) and fell in love with this picture in the Star Wars Blog Flickr stream. I did a little digging, and got the scoop on the awesome little droid dresses made by Brenda of humblebumbleb. The base of the dresses is sewn using New Look pattern # 6878. It's a quick and easy pattern that I make for my girls for every holiday and event. The dresses were then embellished with puff paint. That's right, the same thing we all used when we were 10 years old to paint on everything, it is one of my favorite craft supplies. A little felt here and there for R2's panel, and finished the outfits off with little bow head bands from the left over fabric.I wanted to make my girl's "costumes" that I knew they would be comfortable in and wear all day and that would be cute and girly.As if the girls' dresses weren't adorable enough, Brenda and her husband made rad t-shirts to round out the family wardrobe. She shared what I think might be one of the coolest family portraits I've ever seen. I wore a shirt that I embellished with some iron on glitter letters and glitter covered felt silhouettes of R2 and 3PO that read "Droid Factory" (quite appropriate with the two kids and another baby on the way) and my husband rounded off the family ensemble with a shirt that read "These aren't the droids you're looking for."Brenda, who is a milliner, topped off her outfit with this awesome felt Millennium Falcon fascinator. So cool! Read the Full Story » | More on CRAFT » | Comments » | Read more articles in Kids | Digg this! blog.craftzine.com |
Prabal Gurung Crafts Sensibility, Lacoste Builds On Pops of bold color and geometric details could be seen on the runway as both Prabal Gurung and Lacoste shared their latest collections Saturday. ny1.com |
LilyPad in the Wild: New Communities around Design, Engineering CRAFT friend Leah Buechley, creator of the LilyPad Arduino and head of the High-Low Tech group at the MIT Media Lab, just published a really interesting paper: LilyPad in the Wild: How Hardwareʼs Long Tail is Supporting New Engineering and Design Communities. Gender plays a big role in the study, and the findings tend to imply that LilyPad is getting women and girls interested in technology and engineering. Our experience suggests a different approach, one we call Building New Clubhouses. Instead of trying to fit people into existing engineering cultures, it may be more constructive to try to spark and support new cultures, to build new clubhouses. Our experiences have led us to believe that the problem is not so much that communities are prejudiced or exclusive but that they’re limited in breadth–both intellectually and culturally. Some of the most revealing research in diversity in STEM found that women and other minorities don’t join STEM communities not because they are intimidated or unqualified but rather because they’re simply uninterested in these disciplines. One of our current research goals is thus to question traditional disciplinary boundaries and to expand disciplines to make room for more diverse interests and passions. To show, for example, that it is possible to build complex, innovative, technological artifacts that are colorful, soft, and beautiful. We want to provide alternative pathways to the rich intellectual possibilities of computation and engineering. We hope that our research shows that disciplines can grow both technically and culturally when we re-envision and re-contextualize them. When we build new clubhouses, new, surprising, and valuable things happen. As our findings on shared LilyPad projects seem to support, a new female-dominated electrical engineering/computer science community may emerge.More: Craft Meets Tech at MIT CRAFT Video: LilyPad Arduino 101 CRAFT Video: LilyPad Arduino Blinking Bike PatchRead the Full Story » | More on CRAFT » | Comments » | Read more articles in Soft Circuits | Digg this! blog.craftzine.com |