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Cross-Communication
Sep. 17th, 2009 10:07 amI passed an interesting evening with the 15 yr old son of a musical friend of mine. Seems he went to A-Cen last year and has been bitten by the costuming bug and of course he's picked something terribly complex for a first project. His mom contacted me about sewing lessons but I took a look at the YouTube tutorial vids he was working from and realized it was less sewing than engineering so I proposed that they just come over for an hour with samples of some of the materials he'd be working with and also some stiff paper cutouts of the pieces he was having trouble with and we'd work through the vids together. In exchange they could take me to dinner afterwards.
The costume is an anime character who has a sort of robot hand and arm. The online tutorial makes the pieces from a styrene and vinyl sandwich which is then shaped by stitching the seams and sealing the edges with hot glue. Then the pieces are attached with hot glue to a piece of elastic to allow movement.
I had watched a couple of the vids prior to the session so I had prepared the right kinds of needles, thread, and some materials suggestions as well as some possibly easier alternatives that I thought might work. We started out with basics like how to tie a knot at the end of a thread and sew a running stitch, and then we worked with regular thread and stiff paper first so that he understood the principles. I sewed one seam and then he did the other. Once he got the first seam he really got it, and fairly quickly got the 3 pieces that make up the finger assembly mocked up out of the paper. We then assembled them using my hot glue gun and a scrap of elastic. Again I put the first one and then he did the rest.
He's a really smart kid and does a lot of modeling work, but was just having trouble making the 2D into 3D leap, even with the video. I think it's kind of like the fact that I have a lot of trouble learning a 3D task from 2D diagrams, even with help - witness all my failed attempts to learn to knit. He really just needed someone to hold his hands for the first steps who knew what they were doing - his mom can barely sew on a button. Also, he was using a standard hardware-store hot glue gun instead of the smaller craft ones - kind of like trying to hammer in a nail with a sledgehammer: it's possible but the job is much easier with the right tools. I was able to make some suggestions of materials that might be easier to use - buttonhole thread rather than double-doubled regular thread (which will twist up on you) and using a pushpin to poke the holes in the styrene/vinyl sandwich before running the needle through rather than just using a larger needle and pliers, and using a low-temp hot glue gun to avoid blisters since there is a lot of fiddly finger-press work.
One of the last things we worked on was folding the vinyl around the edges of the intricate styrene pieces and he was having trouble figuring out the clips and notches needed to go around curves. It was easier for him - rather than working in 3D with scissors like the video to work on a flat surface with an Xacto knife to get more precisely close to the edges. Lastly was the fake "screws" on the back of the hand - they are really just blobs of hot glue with a "slot" pressed into the cooling glue with a knife to look like a screw, but he got hung up on the fact that the video used a knife and the word "cut" to describe what you needed to do. I ended up describing it as "like when you use a fork to make a pattern at the edge of a pie crust". Yay for geek/English translation skills!
Motivated by our work, we then did dinner at the Japanese/Thai place across the street. Everyone enjoyed their orders, and when the husband (who has major food allergies and sensitivities) showed up to pick them up I was able to help him find stuff on the menu he could eat. Thai and Japanese are often good choices for people with gluten issues because so much of it is rice-based or rice-noodle based.
It was a very pleasant evening - I rather enjoy the actual act of teaching, but only with motivated students. I have little patience or tolerance for discipline - if a kid doesn't want to be there then they should leave and stop wasting both of our time (which doesn't work too well in a standard classroom setting), but I really enjoy one-on-one teaching/collaboration. And even at dinner I was able to help describe the foods to people who were unfamiliar with them. We even had a new waitress who was having trouble with our orders (whether the tempura was the appetizer of meal portion, etc) so I came up with the idea of getting back the menu and pointing to things. After all, I'd been working all evening with someone with a more visual style of learning so it seemed logical to go pack to pictures.
We ran later than I'd expected, so I wasn't able to get to the laundry I'd hoped to do, but I've got lots of time this weekend if necessary. I'm getting my physical (and hence my flu shot) on Saturday and know I'll feel lousy afterwards so I didn't plan anything for the rest of the day.
The costume is an anime character who has a sort of robot hand and arm. The online tutorial makes the pieces from a styrene and vinyl sandwich which is then shaped by stitching the seams and sealing the edges with hot glue. Then the pieces are attached with hot glue to a piece of elastic to allow movement.
I had watched a couple of the vids prior to the session so I had prepared the right kinds of needles, thread, and some materials suggestions as well as some possibly easier alternatives that I thought might work. We started out with basics like how to tie a knot at the end of a thread and sew a running stitch, and then we worked with regular thread and stiff paper first so that he understood the principles. I sewed one seam and then he did the other. Once he got the first seam he really got it, and fairly quickly got the 3 pieces that make up the finger assembly mocked up out of the paper. We then assembled them using my hot glue gun and a scrap of elastic. Again I put the first one and then he did the rest.
He's a really smart kid and does a lot of modeling work, but was just having trouble making the 2D into 3D leap, even with the video. I think it's kind of like the fact that I have a lot of trouble learning a 3D task from 2D diagrams, even with help - witness all my failed attempts to learn to knit. He really just needed someone to hold his hands for the first steps who knew what they were doing - his mom can barely sew on a button. Also, he was using a standard hardware-store hot glue gun instead of the smaller craft ones - kind of like trying to hammer in a nail with a sledgehammer: it's possible but the job is much easier with the right tools. I was able to make some suggestions of materials that might be easier to use - buttonhole thread rather than double-doubled regular thread (which will twist up on you) and using a pushpin to poke the holes in the styrene/vinyl sandwich before running the needle through rather than just using a larger needle and pliers, and using a low-temp hot glue gun to avoid blisters since there is a lot of fiddly finger-press work.
One of the last things we worked on was folding the vinyl around the edges of the intricate styrene pieces and he was having trouble figuring out the clips and notches needed to go around curves. It was easier for him - rather than working in 3D with scissors like the video to work on a flat surface with an Xacto knife to get more precisely close to the edges. Lastly was the fake "screws" on the back of the hand - they are really just blobs of hot glue with a "slot" pressed into the cooling glue with a knife to look like a screw, but he got hung up on the fact that the video used a knife and the word "cut" to describe what you needed to do. I ended up describing it as "like when you use a fork to make a pattern at the edge of a pie crust". Yay for geek/English translation skills!
Motivated by our work, we then did dinner at the Japanese/Thai place across the street. Everyone enjoyed their orders, and when the husband (who has major food allergies and sensitivities) showed up to pick them up I was able to help him find stuff on the menu he could eat. Thai and Japanese are often good choices for people with gluten issues because so much of it is rice-based or rice-noodle based.
It was a very pleasant evening - I rather enjoy the actual act of teaching, but only with motivated students. I have little patience or tolerance for discipline - if a kid doesn't want to be there then they should leave and stop wasting both of our time (which doesn't work too well in a standard classroom setting), but I really enjoy one-on-one teaching/collaboration. And even at dinner I was able to help describe the foods to people who were unfamiliar with them. We even had a new waitress who was having trouble with our orders (whether the tempura was the appetizer of meal portion, etc) so I came up with the idea of getting back the menu and pointing to things. After all, I'd been working all evening with someone with a more visual style of learning so it seemed logical to go pack to pictures.
We ran later than I'd expected, so I wasn't able to get to the laundry I'd hoped to do, but I've got lots of time this weekend if necessary. I'm getting my physical (and hence my flu shot) on Saturday and know I'll feel lousy afterwards so I didn't plan anything for the rest of the day.
