Live at Home Session 1

This morning we had our first session with the Live at Home group. Before the session we were all a little nervous about whether the group would engage with the idea, after all the prep we'd put in it really felt like crunch time!!

The group was quite a bit smaller than we expected as a few members were under the weather. Despite this I think it went really well! The information sheets went down a treat! Some of the ladies had started picking out which fabrics and threads they wanted to use before we'd even introduced ourselves! As the workshop ran we sat amoungst everyone and mingled with the group. A lot of them were telling stories about things they'd made when they were younger and the different styles of stitches they would use. It was lovely to hear how our project was bringing back these memories and allowing them to take part in something they enjoyed doing.

Things I picked up on from this session:

- Threading up the needles was a brilliant idea. It allowed everything to run smoothly and made life a lot easier for everyone.

- We wanted to encourage people to sew in this workshop so we didn't put the drawing templates out at the beginning of the session. I suggested that we should perhaps include them at the beginning of the session tomorrow so that if people didn't want to sew, they wouldn't write off the project immediately as there would be another option available. Tomorrows session also includes a lot more men so we're expecting the drawing excersise to be more popular with them.

- The envelopes to do at home weren't quite as popular as we expected. A lot of people seemed to be quite busy with other projects such as home improvements so they didn't feel they'd have the time to complete any samples at home. However they did enjoy the workshop and were looking forward to working with us again! We also realised that we hadn't threaded up the needles in the envelopes we had given out and so tomorrow we're going to tell people that this is the case and offer to thread it up for them before they leave should they wish.

- Although we had put multiple tags on the swatches and explained that we'd like them to be passed around so multiple people could work into one swatch it didn't quite work like that! People seemed to be happy to invest a lot of time in one swatch so they could get it to a stage where they were happy with it. They would then move onto a completely new swatch. We're planning to put some of the plainer samples back out tomorrow so that they can be worked on top of.

- Having example samples on the table really helped. Before the session we'd all completed a couple of swatches to take in so that participants could see what sort of thing we were looking for. This seemed to really inspire everyone as they could see the various stitch types and what they could create with them.

- Everyone seemed to really enjoy that we sat and chatted to them, so much so that we got invited to stay for lunch!

So the first sessions down and it seems to have gone really positively with the group! I feel like we're really achieving the concept by combining these workshops with the envelopes as such a variety of people and therefore wide community have been able to get involved with the project!