Preparing for the Workshop!

A few weeks ago our group finalized our plan for the October 20^th workshop on the U of A mall. We decided to dedicate this workshop to make coin purses and sunglasses cases to donate to BICAS to be sold at their annual Art Auction. There was a lot of in class preparation, as well as time spent at BICAS.

Saturday, October 15, our group met at BICAS to gather our materials and create some examples for display (these would be placed on the table advertising for our workshop). Working for a few hours, we managed to put together a few examples of what we intended to make the following Thursday at our workshop.

Before going to BICAS we had discussed a few different ways we intended to make our coin purses/sunglass cases. It was interesting to see how our plans differed from actually creating and working with the materials. To start off our groundwork we collected and cleaned a bunch of bolts, nuts, and other small bike pieces to work with as our purse fasteners. We also had to cut and clean the rubber tubing, which is what we used as the main material for our projects.

After we had all of our materials ready, we each made one or two example bags. I first started with making a coin purse and then made a sunglasses case. Both turned out pretty good, considering they were my first ones.

When I finished these display items, I thought it would be a good idea to cut the rubber tubing into templates for the workshop, this way when people wanted to make things, they had their materials ready to go, all they needed to do was sew. Another thing I did to help prepare was sewing some fasteners onto the rubber strips; this was also to save time for the upcoming workshop.

One last idea we had was to make key chains. We made a few of these, using wire and the small recycled bicycle pieces BICAS uses with their jewelry making. Our main idea was to have a variety of possibilities for those who were taking place in the workshop. We wanted both male and females to feel welcomed and comfortable creating and contributing.

By the end of the day, we felt confident about our upcoming workshop. We were prepared and ready to host the coin purse and sunglasses case workshop on the U of A mall.