The thoughts, sewing projects, and fabric oglings of a dedicated sewist.

School Projects

6/6/13
Belly, my oldest daughter, finished her first year of school last week.  Kindergarten - check, onto First Grade!  I wanted to make gifts for her teachers but when you include aids and specials and that meant eight gifts.  I left this 'till the final week to do, so this meant something pretty quick. 

Belly's contribution:




My contribution:


Zippered pouches for aids and specials

Book totes from apple corduroy for her main teachers
 
I figured her two male teachers wouldn't want a pretty little zippered pouch so they got Chipotle gift certificates instead.  The only simple male sewing project I could think of was boxer shorts and that didn't seem appropriate!
 



To save time, I interfaced the pouch fabric with a fabric-like fusible interfacing (Pellon SF101 shape-flex woven interfacing) instead of lining them.  I sewed the pouches up on my fancy serger using a piping foot to attach the zippers, and each one only took about 15 minutes from cutting to fusing to sewing. 


I also just hit my one year milestone with teaching sewing.  I teach primarily at The Little Bits Workshop in River Forest (if you're local and you want to take a class, go here) and I really liked the skirt project I led on Monday night.  I've found that while students dream about sewing their own clothes, I have trouble filling those classes with students opting instead for simple home dec project classes.  I had a group of students from my last beginner sewing session who were a bit more gung-ho, so I put together a one-night class to teach them to make a simple jersey skirt. 

My inspiration was this skirt, which I found on Pinterest, but I changed the drafting formula and the waistband:


Elle Apparel Socialite Skirt - tutorial

I made a couple sample skirts (I'm wearing the stripey one as I type), one with pleats and one without:


Keep in mind that my students have only been sewing for about a month and not all of them even have a sewing machine at home.  Here's what they made in three hours, from drafting to cutting to sewing jersey fabric for the first time:



You can't see it in this photo, but Nora did a fantastic job matching stripes!
My mantra through the class was, "Your first skirt won't be your best skirt," but they turned out really well.  I can't wait to see what their second and third skirts look like!
5 comments on "School Projects"
  1. so cool!! The skirts came out great :)

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  2. oh man ... I wish so much you'd made those male teachers boxer shorts !!!

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    1. I also meant to say how damn cute all that stuff is - I suppose they deserve it.

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  3. Wow, cool! A knit skirt is a great place to start, and they are the best to wear! Love all your bags too!

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