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 :) !

Embroidered Summer

This summer I introduced embroidery to my younger students, the 8-12 year olds.    

In past lessons, a couple of them had mentioned that they didn't like hand sewing. Can you believe it? They said that- to me? So after I heard that, guess what I planned? A summer of hand sewing!  I thought summer would be a good time to do this as they would have some extra time around the house and be able to to it at home- not just in lesson. I use embroidery to teach hand sewing skills because it really encompasses it all: threading a needle, tying knots in the end of the thread, sewing and keeping the thread in the needle, making the needle go in and come up where you want,  tying off at the end, etc.  Plus is is fun to sew pictures in thread on stuff. 

I set each girl up with a hoop. fabric, embroidery needle & thread.  I used a dressmakers tracing wheel and pattern tracing paper to transfer straight lines on to practice fabric. Then we learned the running stitch, back stitch, stem stitch and chain stitch. 

We started out on muslin for practicing. We ended the project with embroidering on a t shirt that they could wear to school. Kayla even did one more project and made a bib for her soon to be born cousin! 

Here are some of the girls learning how and also some finished projects!

Madi and Eden
Eden is teaching her friend Madison how to embroider. 

Nina

 Nina loves dogs. So far every project she has made skirt- purse, pj pants has been out of a fabric that features dogs. So I was not surprised when she chose to embroider two scottie dogs on a shirt.   She is intending for them to look" kinda alien" so she has planned for them to be  green and purple and weird colors.

Nina is using a stem stitch to outline her scotties

Izzy

Izzy is working on the chain stitch.

Izzy is 8. This is Izzy's sewing folder. When each girl starts with me, they have a folder to keep handouts and patterns and the other paper things they need to bring back and forth. Izzy drew a picture of me on the back of hers- aren't I gorgeous!!!

Isn't this just the cutest thing ever? 

Kayla made a bib for her son to be cousin. He is a boy and so she designed a bib with an outer space theme.
Kayla really took to the embroidery. She was the main one saying she didn't like hand sewing. She admitted to me this morning, it isn't so bad. :) She is even planning to incorporate embroidery into her christmas presents!

The pattern piece for this bib is a dinner plate! Trace a dinner plate onto your fabric- then use a saucer to draw in the neck area. Cut this out and you have a bib! Bias tape edges make this a really quick , easy to sew up gift. 

We used some iron on transfers from Sublime Stitching for our images. 

This alien is absolutely adorable. Look at her perfect stitches! This could not possibly be any cuter!

We had a hurricane here in August.  We lost power in the morning on the first day and were without it for 6 days. Eden and I sat in front of the window and embroidered. A lot. There really wasn't much else to do!  She worked on a pair of birds. 

 Here she is working on her birds during the hurricane.

These  are her finished birds.  I am so proud of my darlin'- these look incredible! We are going to frame these and hang them in the dining room. She worked very hard at getting her stitches to look like feathers.

This last project is mine! :) I saw this in a catalogue for way too much money so I made my own- I think I am going to make a pillow cover out of it. The moon and witch are appliques. In the catalogue it was framed but I think a pillow would be  much more fun.