Tailoring Project

Tailoring Project

Tailoring at Crossroads School

Girl Practising Tailoring

Teaching tailoring encourages students to make clothes for themselves and their family, and also provides them with a skill that they can use to find work. This is a great vocation for students who are not particularly academic after they leave school.

Tailoring has been part of the curriculum at Crossroads School since it re-opened in 2007, but the project came to a halt 2 years later due to lack of funding and other problems.

Project Re-Launch

Holy Trinity C of E School Ramsgate very generously donated £220 from their Lent Appeal in 2011 to fund the cost of 3 new Singer Sewing Machines for Crossroads. This brought the total to the school to 11 machines. They have been well used and were re-furbished in February 2012.

Trustees visited tailoring classes in August 2013 and were delighted to see the results! Pupils were busy making shirts and blouses and will be progressing to trousers next. They have already made underwear and skirts!

Calvin is the tailoring teacher, who is very skilled, very smartly dressed and has a diploma. More equipment and materials are always needed, such as irons, an overlocking machine, a button hole machine, rolls of material. Stools of the correct height for the sewing machines have been purchased and are now in use.

Calvin is the tailoring teacher, who is very skilled, very smartly dressed and has a diploma. More equipment and materials are  always needed, such as irons, an overlocking machine, a button hole machine, rolls of material. Stools of the correct height for the sewing machines have been purchased and are now in use.

Tailoring is now a regular part of the curriculum for S1 and S2.  S3 started in 2014. More machines and materials have been purchased, and Tailoring now has its own classroom. Some students can now make their own uniform.

Children in their uniform.

An electric ‘designer’ sewing machine has kindly been donated by one of the teachers at St George’s School. This machine is able to do patterns and button holes, and will be taken out to Ugandan with the Team in the Spring of 2015.  Electricity will be laid on to the classroom.