TEXTILES AS A MEDIUM FOR RAISING AWARENESS ABOUT SCABIES
After a few experiments that you can follow in the Blog journal, we settled on a felt mat. This was for reasons of portability, and ease of making. The vinyl version had been heavy, awkward to transport, and any glues we could safely use didn’t stick well to the surface. The cool melt glue guns were the most successful, but I think because there was no absorption the glue peeled off when the vinyl was bent.
Two metres of 148cm wide neon orange polyester felt from Fabricland made the best base. I used another metre each of four different colours (fuschia pink, royal blue, pale pink and green), plus some oddments we already had to make the mites.
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- Weighting the pattern down and drawing around it in chalk
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- Weighting the fabric
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- Cutting around the drawn line
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- Cutting the final part
Cutting_mites from vikki on Vimeo.
Mites
We cut approximately 6 of each size, but the density of spacing on the mat is up to you. Depending on the age of the children you may wish to make them all bigger, or space them closer etc.
We explained the basic principle of the game to them before they started to make the mat. Then the children glued and sewed the mites on in the spaces they chose. The stitches used to sew down the mites varied between blanket stitch, over sewing and running stitch in a mixture of coloured wools.
Sewing the mites on the mat
On a nice sunny day I finished the mat in the garden by painting on the Scabies Scramble logo and adding small painted ‘eggs’ in any gaps between mites, (but these could have been sewn on as well). Finally I painted on the scores; highest score for the eggs, then the smaller mites, working down to a score of one for the largest mites.
Garden mat making
adding a logo and scores
For the painting I mixed plain PVA with some poster paints knocking around from when my kids were small, but any acrylic paints would work fine.
Painting materials
Finally, the children played the game, bringing their drawings on the beanbags, their sewing/making of the mat and a bit of fun together, whilst at the same time imprinting more information about scabies.
Scabies Scramble mid-game
The scoring was in teams, and the instruction sheet for playing Scabies Scramble is downloadable via the link below. There are also instructions for an alternative game that uses the beanbags, but does not require a mat.
Enjoy.
Instructions for playing Scabies Scramble
Mat-mite templates
These are pdf documents that you can download. Print the two out, and photocopy at larger and smaller scale to make your own suitably sized templates for cutting out the flat mites for the mat.
