Saturday Girls

 Today was a wonderful day! Today is Saturday and I teach 5 girls throughout the day starting at 9, ending at 4:30.  Today all the girls remembered all of their stuff, sewed slowly and carefully and had fun! I love days like this! 

I am so proud of them, I took pictures today to show off thier creations

At 9 am each Saturday Kayla comes  dancing in the door.  She is so much fun to start the day out with. She makes sure I am awake! She finished her  apron today! Kayla did such a wonderful job of stitching the bias tape onto the edges of the apron

See me in the reflection of the mirror? I am waving at you! :) 

 Kayla added buttons onto the top part of her apron for embellishment. We had planned a pocket but  she changed her mind and just wanted to add  buttons.

 See me again? Behind Kayla?

Izzy is next at 10:30. Today we covered her sewing notebook. I am having each girl keep  a sewing notebook. I write in it each week what we did, homework and our plan for next time. It helps to keep them ( and me! )  on track with what we are doing. We use a plain black & white composition notebook and cover it with a  fabric of their choice.  It is a great one hour project  and they love to use it each week.

Izzy is cutting out her interfacing. 

Izzy chose a piece of leftover fabric from my daughter's  bedroom valances.  I keep all fabric scraps. :)  They are great for projects like this that don't need too much fabric.
Izzy did a fantastic job of hemming the inside  pieces and slowly stitching around the entire  cover!

The outside of her notebook

The inside cover of her notebook. 

Nine is at 12. I am so proud of Nina today!!! But look at these photos- Nina  is even more proud of herself. Look at her smile!  This is the practice version  we made to test out a pattern for a summer dress. We made a shirt first just to check for fit. 

Nina really used her sewing skills on this one-  gathering,  a nice hem, creating straps- she did it all herself! I did put in the zipper for her, we haven't covered those yet.  She will shop for fabric for her dress this next two weeks and we then  start on her  dream version. 

We had 10 minutes left in lesson and she decided that the shirt just needed something. So we looked in my ribbon  box and she found a ribbon that she liked and  we added it where the bodice connects to the lower part of the shirt. She is also going to add buttons where the straps meet the top of the bodice.
I just love how  confident she looks! She is so happy with her work and she should be!

 That smile is fantastic! She is so proud of what she made!

Tori is at 2. She is working on her Pajama pants. Here she is cutting the material. We have already made the muslin version, tested it for fit, altered the pattern to make those adjustments and are on on the real thing. I love the fabrics she chose. She is  doing a black & orange zebra print on one leg and black on the other leg.  They are going to be awesome!!!

I did get a picture of Tori smiling but she would not want me to post it here-  I caught her mid laugh so.... not the most flattering angle! :)  So you get serious Tori face as she is  cutting out her fabric. 

Haley comes to lesson at 3:30. Haley is finishing up her circle skirt.  She is my last lesson  of the day and such a sweet girl- I really enjoy teaching her.  :)

Haley learned the  lesson of wash your fabric before you make your item with this skirt . She found a lovely fabric with small flowers on it, washed the fabric and the flowers disappeared!! She still wanted to use it for the skirt,  so we did but  it is good that the fading happened before she made the skirt. 

Haley put in a lovely half inch double fold hem on her circle skirt. 

The front of her skirt

The back of her skirt. 

The skirt isn't totally finished. We just need to finish off the button flaps and stitch down the waistband.

I told her to please tell her dad that I did not plan  for this skirt to be this short! :) :)  She wanted it this way . She promised me to wear leggings underneath :) !

Saturday Girls

Every other Saturday is Lesson Day around here. I have 6 girls from age 10-17. I start at 9 am and I finish up at 6. Lesson days are so much fun! I get to hear all about the trials and tribulations of the 5th grade (so cute!) and high school (nope. don't miss it. ) The girls are all so sweet and really devoted to learning all about sewing .

Wanna meet them?

Kayla started with me in November, She had done a bit of sewing with her grandmother but as her grandmother is in a different state, it was hard to keep it up. Kayla is very interested in making just about everything she sees. Each week when I show what I have been working on, I know she is going to say " I wanna make that!" Kayla has finished our first project together- a stuffed heart wall hanging that incorporated some different stitches on the front, her initials and a small topstitched heart at the bottom. Kayla really was careful stitching around the curves of the heart. Great job Kalya!

Next is Rachael. Rach has been taking lessons with me for about a year and has graduated up to patterns! Woohoo! Here she is cutting out her tissue pattern for her Pajama pants. Everyone starts out with the pattern as their first one. It doesn't matter to me if you are 10, 30 or 87- when we move onto patterns you make this one. Why? It has two pattern pieces and is easy to alter.
In the background of this photo you can see some of my recent projects hanging up. There are itty bitty dresses I made for my new baby niece to be Molly ( Steff! If you see this picture before the shower DON'T LOOK!! ) There is also the skirt I made from the Sew Serendipity book. Also the muslin and version one of a jacket from the same book. The jacket still needs buttonholes but I haven't done them yet because I got mad at the jacket. ( Long story. I will tell that one some other time. )

Then we have Nina. Nina is also making the pajama pants. She is cutting out the muslin from her pattern pieces here.

When we make a muslin, sometimes it is hard to tell what side is what . So we write on the fabric with fabric pen. I thought it was cute Nina signed her name underneath the note to ourselves. And put a little smiley face.

This is Haley- world meet Haley, Haley meet world. Haley is so funny we have blast at lessons. Here she is modeling her First Skirt. It is hard to see in the picture but the fabric was actually a really soft white and purple check. She did a really nice job. Currently we are working on a tote bag. We cut the pieces last week and will be assembling next lesson day.

Tori began lesson with me in December. She doesn't say too much but I can see the gears turning in her brain each lesson. She is like a sponge just soaking up all the info. She is working on an envelope pillow here with buttonholes. She got an awesome new machine a few weeks ago and buttons are a breeze. Hooray for the automatic buttonhole setting on sewing machines!

Oh and see my pretty pretty chairs in the background? They go with my pretty pretty new table.

And last we have DAISY!!!! Daisy had to drop out for a little while as school commitments we taking up all of her time. But she is back and we are working on a pair of pajama pants. Daisy has been accepted to a fashion design program for college next year. I forget where... I think it she said Mary Mount up near DC. I think. I will check. Her family is also moving this summer so we are now in cram mode! We have to get as much knowledge into her as we can before she goes. So after this we are going to do as many items from patterns as we can fit in :)!! Here she is cutting out her muslin from the altered pattern.
And that's it- those are my Saturday Girls!

You might say- there are two blog posts in two days! How is she doing this? What lit the fire under her? Well, I am stuck at home with strep and had to cancel lessons. I am also procrastinating finishing up a huge window proposal for a client so I am blogging :) :) :) I have to get out the calculator , use all available brain cells and put all of my crazy notes and samples into some sort of coherent professional looking presentation.

I have also done all of my emailing to clients and students. I checked both bank accounts. Read the news (Hooray Egypt!) . Read MSN gossip ( Charlie Sheen can drop off the planet- I am so sick of reading about him!) . Checked facebook. Looked at slide shows from fashion week. (Really people? Some of those runway fashions looked very badly constructed. ) I read some sewing blogs. I converted a step-by-step off of Sew Mama Sew into Word so I can print it out and work on it down in the sewing room. It will be a cute top for Eden for this summer.

I have run out of things to waste time with so I guess I have to do this proposal ! :)