Sunday, November 6, 2011

New Sewing Club


Some of my son's classmates have been bugging their moms to teach them to sew. The problem is, many of the moms don't sew. Home Ec is not offered in grade school anymore (in my day it was compulsory in grades 7 and 8). 4H clubs are hard to come by too.
So I thought about starting up a sewing club. I had several "maybe" replies and three that confirmed. So we had our first 'meeting' on Saturday.
Two girls brought machines, one we couldn't get to work.
The third didn't have one, so a couple of my machines pitched in.
This way we had 1 mechanical machine with a drop in bobbin, 1 mechanical machine with a side entry bobbin (my Featherweight) and one computerized machine (my older Janome). The girls got to play with all three.
Once they could sew a straight line on lined paper, they moved up to curvy lines. Once they passed that, we went for my stash to get some fabric for tote bags. The girls were amazed at my stash!! They each got to pick out the fabric for their tote bag. I helped them cut the piece 80 cm square with scissors. Then introduced them to the rotary cutter for cutting the piece for the straps.
They folded the large square in half, right sides together and stitched around the outside 3 sides, leaving a 10 cm space at the end to turn it right side out. Once it was right side out, they stitched the opening closed and pushed one half into the other half to make the bag. Using a piece 60 cm long and 10 cm wide, I had them press it in half lengthwise, then fold each half in again so it ended up four thicknesses with the raw edges inside. They topstitched this length on both sides and then cut it in half to make two straps. They sewed the straps onto the top of the bag and then folded them into the upright position and topstitched around the whole top of the bag. That's it. The bags were done, we were on time (2 hours) and the girls were ecstatic at what they had made. We all had a lot of fun, and I think we've started 3 girls onto the great hobby of sewing!