Maker Lab Hosts Felt Pennant Sewing Workshop

Organizer of the Felt Pennant Sewing Workshop Elsie Mele '27 leads a group of students through the activity. Photo by Lilian DeFilippis '26

On Oct. 1, students from all different majors were invited to ring in the new month at the sewing workshop in the Steel Plant’s Maker Lab. 

The workshop was focused on the art of hand sewing. Students worked with felt, needles, thread and ribbon in order to create beautiful pennant flags to decorate their dorms. This trend has been floating around TikTok and Pinterest, and Elsie Mele ‘26, the Maker Lab’s textile specialist, decided to utilize this to educate students on practical sewing skills. 

During this workshop, students were able to use the materials in the Maker Lab, including their markers, rulers, felt, sewing materials and more. These materials can be costly for college students with a limited income, and the Maker Lab’s mission to provide the Marist University community with access to these materials has opened an opportunity for those interested. 

“The Maker Lab is a space where any major, any student, anybody can come and use,” Mele said. “We want you to come and experiment and play and learn things.”

Her experience gained through her summer internship in a product development textile role led her to pitch her current role in the Maker Lab to her boss, Ais Oisín, the Marist Maker Lab manager. 

Her expertise is in textile work, and she can assist most design students with their choices of material and manipulations of it, but she is also more than willing to provide her knowledge to students of any major. 

“We have a student right now who's doing a laser cutting project with fabric, and I worked with him and helped him see if the fabric could go into the laser cutter, see if it was synthetic or not, and I kind of just talked him through the process of what he needs to do to the fabric,” said Mele. 

Mele is currently assisting her friend on a Halloween costume project, helping her to alter her deadstock costume she found online. 

“I'm corseting it for her and I'm teaching her how to do like boning and structuring on the back, and then I'm also adding grommets too,” said Mele. 

If you missed this past workshop, there are more opportunities to get involved with the Maker Lab. Mele says that her next workshop will be focused on tackling the sewing machine, teaching students the basics with both the Maker Lab’s heavy-duty and regular sewing machines.