Flower Power in Sister City,Tybee Island, Ga.

by Susan Gartner



The power of the flower reached all the way to Tybee Island, Ga., this week where my sister-in-law, Lisa, and her 3rd and 4th grade class at St. Michael’s Elementary School created felt Flower Power pins.

Lisa was inspired by the Dayton Street Flower Power Project photos she saw posted on A Yellow Springs Blog for the past several weeks and came up with the idea as a Mother’s Day present for her students. She told me the boys were just as enthusiastic about the idea as the girls ― the sewing part in particular ― and everybody really threw themselves into the project. No blood was drawn, nobody accidentally (or intentionally) sewed their finger to a flower, and all the pins turned out beautifully.

“I could tell they were really proud of themselves,” said Lisa, who called me as soon as school let out on Thursday and the children had gone home with their presents. She originally thought of purchasing inexpensive jewelry boxes to hold the pins but instead found an appropriate template to use and taught the kids how to make their own triangular prism box.

“These worked out so much better,” she said of the handcrafted and personalized jewelry cases. “From top to bottom, these presents were truly something that they made themselves.”