Sewing At Your WPL

The Make IT Place at the Washington Public Library is an amazing community resource and if you have not yet utilized it, we hope you can find something to enrich your “making” interest soon. All of the machines are available to use for free for anyone who has a WPL library card and has become certified. You can become certified by taking a class or visiting our website and completing the certification process for a particular piece of equipment.

The library staff has been divided into teams to run the Make IT Place with valuable help from volunteers and a few paid instructors. One of my areas is the Sewing Center with my team partner Alison Greiner and our fantastic volunteers. We have been offering Beginning Sewing classes once a month and will continue to offer them into the new year. We have six Eversewn Charlotte sewing machines which we use for the classes and Jean Frazer has been our teacher. At this time, we are only offering adult classes but hope to expand to teens and kids soon. For the month of November we are offering a fun, holiday-themed class, Sewing a Holiday Stocking! For this class we are asking that participants be certified ahead of time and it is easy as 1-2-3-4. 1) First, visit our website at www.washington.lib.ia.us and scroll down to click on the orange Make IT Place button. 2) Second, you will see the list of equipment and you should scroll down to the Sewing/Quilting section and click on the blue link “Learn More About the Sewing/Quilting Equipment.” 3) Thirdly, watch the Charlotte Sewing videos. They will show you how to load the thread and wind the bobbin. Read the checklist and then click on the certification box to take the simple quiz. 4) Lastly, you will receive an email from the staff asking you to schedule a time to demonstrate loading the thread and winding the bobbin. After that, voila, you are certified and can sign up for the stocking class on the Events Calendar!

So far, the sewing classes have been a ball. We have so much fun learning with Jean, who is a patient teacher. Don’t miss out on this opportunity to learn a new skill all for free at your WPL!