How sewing with kids, Marie Kondo and conscious consumerism can sometimes collide.
A few days ago, I was sitting in my favourite coffee shop reading the paper and
Marie Kondo, whose name seems to be just about everywhere, popped up in an article. A few pages on I was wading through talk about conscious consumerism. As far as I could understand, Marie Kondo and conscious consumerism are attempts to tackle some quite specific, modern problems.
It seems that Marie Kondo wants us to ask ourselves, “what makes us happy?” and wants to show that having more and more things just doesn’t do the trick. Conscious consumerism talks about the impact of our purchases on the lives of others and on the environment and wants us to make moral choices by rejecting goods that are produced by exploiting workers or by companies who are careless of the damage they are causing our environment.
At this point I should confess, my thinking isn’t linear and logical. It works in a muddled way and Marie Kondo and conscious consumerism started to muddle up together in my mind with Sew a Softie and sewing with kids and before I knew it, there was Walter sitting next to my coffee cup and he had a lot to say.
Walter’s response to Marie Kondo’s question was simple, “Buy less and create more”. “Well, I don’t think that’s what Marie Kondo had in mind” I said but Walter isn’t easily put off and continued to elaborate his idea, “I don’t know what makes adults happy but I do know that sewing softies makes kids happy…it makes them happy because a softie that they’ve created themselves and sewn themselves is more than a wonderful friend or a toy to play with, it’s their own creation, and every time they look at it it says to them, “look what you can do. You did this. You are creative, you are amazing.”
Now Walter’s views are open to the charge of bias as he is a softie but nevertheless, I had to agree with him. Children who sew their own softies not only love what they are doing, they also become filled with self-confidence and a sense of just how much they can accomplish by themselves. I do think they will grow up to be a different kind of consumer than the people Marie Kondo is trying to help. They will be consumers who know they don’t need to buy everything, that they can create their own things, and they will certainly know that creating something with your own hands does indeed give you a deep sense of satisfaction and self-worth and happiness.
Yes, I think our softie-sewing children will be a different kind of consumer…which brings me to Walter’s second point.
Walter’s response to conscious consumerism was “buy less, create more…and use what you already have to create it”…I was about to tell Walter he was sounding repetitive but he charged ahead before I could get a word out “create less waste by making softies from old or throw away fabrics , from whatever you already have, create the next generation of softies from re-cycled materials…and share your skills…teach your friends how to sew their own softies from whatever stuff that would be thrown out”.
Again, I had to agree. Walter’s re-cycled conscious consumer softie might not save the planet but it is one small positive step in the right direction…and as the Chinese say, “the journey of a thousand li begins with a single step”.
So, when you next want to sew a project with your kids or students, remember Walter and his ‘take’ on Marie Kondo and conscious consumerism. Remember that you don’t need to go out and buy materials. You can use what you already have. My Walter is made with scrap fabric and an old T-shirt and stuffed with fabric scraps that I cut into thin strips and tiny squares. It’s actually a fun adventure to see what you can use to make your own Walter. A treasure hunt of sorts. He is very easy to sew and is a great way to show kids that you can reuse what you have to make something that will bring many hours of happiness and an awareness that each of us, child and adult, can take our own small steps towards global goals like protecting our precious environment.
How to sew your own Walter with kids
Walter is based on my square Zenki design.
I wanted to make my Cecil pocket-sized so I used two 6″ squares of fabric.
I drew a 4″ square on the fabric I used for Cecil’s front and used that 4″ square line as my sewing line.
I cut arms, legs and hair from the border outside the sewing line as I do in all the Zenki designs.
