NCERT Solutions for Class 5th The World Around Us Chapter 8 Stitching Clothes Together — Activity 8
Book page 140 – 141 Updated on2026-09-19
Q1.
Stitching Clothes Together — Now, let us use this stitch to bring two pieces of cloth together. 1. Collect small cloth pieces left over at a tailor's shop or some pieces of old cloth. 2. Lay one piece of cloth flat on the table. Place the second piece of cloth on top of it, slightly overlapping it. 3. Now, use a needle and thread to do a simple running stitch to join them together.Two pieces of cloth laid one over the other, with a running stitch along the part where they overlap.
Answer
What you will get: two separate pieces of cloth become one bigger piece. Lift it by one corner and the whole thing comes up together. The line of stitching holds it, and you can see the neat dotted line of thread along the join.
How to do it:
Ask at a tailor's shop for the scraps they throw away. Tailors usually give them happily. Or use pieces of an old bedsheet or an old kurta.
Choose two pieces. Flat, plain cotton is easiest for a beginner.
Lay the first piece flat on the table and smooth it out.
Lay the second piece so that it covers about 2 cm of the first along one edge. This covered part is the overlap.
Hold the overlap firmly, or pin it, so it cannot slip while you work.
Thread the needle, knot the end, and make a line of running stitches along the middle of the overlap — up, down, up, down, as in Activity 7.
Keep the stitches small and the line straight. Do not pull the thread tight.
At the end, make two stitches on top of each other at the back and cut the thread.
Now hold the join and pull gently. It should not open.
Why the pieces must overlap: If you put the two edges only just touching and stitch through them, the thread has almost no cloth to hold on to and the join tears open at once. With an overlap, each stitch passes through two full layers of cloth well away from the raw edge. So the pull is shared by many threads of the cloth, not by the few at the edge.
If the join keeps opening: make the overlap wider, make the stitches smaller and closer together, or go back along the same line a second time filling in the gaps. Two rows of stitching are twice as strong as one.
Q2.
4. Add more pieces to create a table cloth, mat, coaster, cleaning cloth or any material of your interest.
Answer
Keep joining piece to piece and a heap of scraps becomes something useful. The pictures on page 141 show exactly this — hands joining small squares of printed cloth, and finished pieces made of many bright squares.
How to plan it, step by step:
Decide first what you are making, and how big it should be. A coaster is about 10 cm square. A table cloth is much bigger.
Sort your scraps by size. Cut them into squares of the same size — say 10 cm — so they fit together neatly.
Lay the squares out on the floor in rows before stitching anything. Move them about until you like the pattern of colours.
Stitch one full row first — square to square, along their edges, with a running stitch.
Make the other rows the same way.
Now stitch row to row until the whole sheet is joined.
Fold the outside edge over once and stitch it down. This is the hem — it stops the edges from fraying.
What to make
How many pieces you need
What to use it for
Coaster
1 or 2 squares, and a spare square as a second layer
To put a hot glass on
Cleaning cloth
4 squares
To wipe the table or the blackboard
Table mat
6 to 9 squares
Under a plate at meal times
Small mat or asan
16 squares (4 rows of 4)
To sit on
Table cloth
25 or more squares
To cover the class table on exhibition day
Bag
2 big rectangles and 2 strips for the handles
To carry books or vegetables
Why this is worth doing: These scraps were going to be thrown away. By joining them you have made something new and useful without buying anything at all. That is exactly the old Indian tradition the book describes on page 142 — making a beautiful quilt by joining small pieces together.
Make it your own: Put the dark pieces and the light pieces one after the other, and a pattern appears by itself. Or put your name in one corner with a few running stitches in a different colour.