It has been quiet here, but that doesn’t mean that I haven’t been working.  It is actually my busy time at my day job, but I also am teaching a sewing class at church, I have been testing a few patterns for a new designer, and learned how to loom bead.

I still have to finish up my beadwork projects, and am waiting on the pattern release for the cute outfits I made for Anya, so I will talk a bit about this teaching sewing thing.

I did this last winter, too, and the premise of it is to teach a 5 week sewing course to the high school kids where we are teaching them a skill while winding faith into it.  I have a hard time getting too deep in the faith part, as it is kinda hard to teach about how to operate a sewing machine, then “and Jesus!!”  I am however teaching them how to sew up some simple things to teach them the basics, which are things that they can give back to others: Conkerr Cancer Pillowcases and Bundles of Love blankets.

I told the youth coordinator that 10 kids was my limit, so of course, there are 14 kids in the class.  Needless to say, my elderly helper and I are having a hard time keeping them from making mistakes when you can’t help everyone at once.  The next frustration is that we are using donated machines.  Two showed up without foot pedals and power cords, one doesn’t work at all, and another doesn’t have the foot attachment.  Hope they didn’t try to take a tax write-off for their non-working donations.

I was able to order a power cord/foot pedal for one of the machines, but the others are still not working.  I am going to have to break down and have the church buy some new, very basic, machines.  I am pretty good at trying to get different machines working, but there are just some things that are too hard for me to figure out with my rudimentary skills (acquired from working on donated machines from my relatives when I was learning to sew in middle school/high school).

So, here is the current pile of pillowcases.  I decided to just finish off the ones that were in process, so we could get started on our next project with the blankets.  I had to rip out many seams and redo most of them.  I definitely need make sure they pay attention to seam allowances and sewing in straight lines.

I asked the coordinator of the Bundles of Love project what they needed that was simple to sew, and she answered back with blankets that were 30″ x 30″.  I cut out a bunch of 11″ x 11″ squares of different fabrics that I had in my stash (using up my stash!) and will have the kids put together blankets with 9 of the squares.  Then, we are going to back them in fleece.

Hopefully, after our last two sessions, we will have 12-14 halfway decent looking blankets….with straight lines. 🙂