Are You a Maker? What’s Your Project?

When you are a Maker, you make things.  Everyone is a Maker, because everyone makes something.  The Maker Movement is an inclusive environment for learning – anything.

I will tell you a secret.  I make things… sometimes.  It’s a bit embarrassing that I finish – probably less than 10% of the things I start making.  Of course, if you count baking and cooking, the percentage goes up quite significantly!

I am continually tasked to find something that I have made to share, because I am a Maker who identifies with the Maker Movement.  Here’s an article from Time magazine about the Maker Movement.  That and I respond to requests for help, and there are many who ask me to be at places and share what I do.  In a Maker Faire, a LEGO convention, a Comic Con or other event, it’s best to have a project to show.

My big problem is that the projects I finish are usually ones that I give away.  Either that, or they get squirelled away somewhere.

I sew, and one of my most memorable is the 52+ image quilt that I embroidered with my Bernina Artista 180 computerized embroidery sewing machine.  The machine is old, and I’d bought it used over 10 years ago from our local Long Beach Sew Vac.  I’d bought it for the embroidery capability, but never used that part of it.  I was afraid of breaking this very expensive sewing machine.

Luckily for me, I had a 4th grader.  There’s no better motivator than your child and the children around him/her.  I was fairly involved with the PTA at Lowell Elementary School, and helped to get donations for the Spring Auction.  So I came up with a project.  It was to make a quilt out of the drawings of the children in the class.

Now I must see if I can find the drawings they generated.  That was several years ago, so I need to fire up some old computers to look for them.

Trish Tsoiasue is a Maker and, together with Morio Murase and Caprice Rothe (Hands of E.T.) started a community called Makersville, a BSA Career Exploring Club called Club Ten (Unit 1010) and a BSA Career Exploring Post called High Values (Unit 1111).  She has come to the conclusion that she makes social systems (communities) and sometimes she makes and finishes physical things.  She is the LUG Ambassador for the Long Beach LEGO User Group, a Recognized LUG.  Once she played a game called the Community Lemonade Game.  She also blogs on the Belmont Shore Patch, and she has several YouTube channels, her main channel being Squigglemom.