Teddy Bear T-Shirts and Sewing Circle Stories

Introduce students of any age to sewing, sewing circles, recycling, and holiday projects while listening to a good story. This weekend, I recycled an old T-Shirt by creating a bunch of little Teddy-Bear T-Shirts and ironing on Image Generator designs (a popular web 2.0 destination.)

While hand stitching little T-Shirts, I got to thinking how this might be a good group project for listening to good stories.

One picture book that comes to mind is "Coat of Many Colors" by Dolly Parton, where her mother sewed (with love) a multicolored jacket for her little girl. Great book for any age, but too short. Another short favorite that my husband reminded me about is "Hiram's Red Shirt," a Golden Book along the lines of "a stitch in time saves nine." There are lots of good read-aloud books, including several "coming of age" books about working as a seamstress or needlepoint to earn a living or learning fine needlepoint because that was what young ladies of nobility did!

I asked California School Librarians for book recommendations, and have been getting a good number of titles and age appropriateness. I'll add a follow-up post on those recommended books.

T-Shirt Advocacy

Rainy weekends are good for reading, but also for closet-cleaning. This weekend, I tackled my T-shirt collection and sorted by theme. One theme is reading, literacy, and libraries. Some shirts are over-sized for workouts at the YMCA, while others are right-sized for shopping, walking, and visits to my local library. Here is an inventory:

Black and Grey T-shirts:
READ (typewriter keys) nourish your mind
Read, Rock & Roll, and Recycle. Avoid Extinction. (Phil Yeh, Cartoonists Across America)
Read U (niversity)

Orange, Peach, and Pinkish T-shirts:
READ for the FUN of it
READ. Succeed. (ALA Atlanta, 1991)
LIBRARIAN (each letter with library and book related embroidery)

Blue, Light Blue, and Aqua T-shirts:
Read'em and Reap (Life is Good.)
The more you read, the more you know (full poem)
The more you read, the more you know (ICON of girl reading; full poem on back)
I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library. Jorge Luis Borges.
READ (denim long-sleeve shirts)

White T-shirts:
Read, Rock & Roll, and Recycle. Avoid Extinction. (Phil Yeh, Cartoonists Across America)
Literacy on Parade (California School Librarians, 1997)
Book - Woman (Kiki, 1989)

Read and Release a Book

BookCrossing: n. the practice of leaving a book in a public place to be picked up and read by others, who then do likewise. (added to the Concise Oxford English Dictionary in August 2004)

I heard about this site and concept years ago, but remembered it over the holidays, during a conversation with my son and his friend, both avid readers and earth-friendly travelers. They are bicycling through Mexico, reading and releasing books. Now they know about this site and can spread the word. Check out the website at http://www.bookcrossing.com/ to read more about setting books free.