Sewing in the house

Yes, there has been sewing going on in my house, but not all by me!

I've been working on the sewing project for my girls who did the Happy Villages a couple of weeks ago. We are making cushions. Cat cushions! (They both like cats... and you know me...) I have all those leaders/enders that I've been collecting so I thought we'd make use of those. The girls did a fairly good job. One of them seemed to catch on very quickly, the other had a bit more trouble controlling the sewing machine. They even machine quilted their pieces and I sent them home to embroider the cat faces.

I have finished my cushion cat and the girls will be coming tomorrow to see if we can get their parts all sewn. I need to go buy stuffing today.

I'm really having fun "teaching" the Happy Villages. Since it is summer vacation I figure students don't have to just study so even in my ladies classes we've been making villages. These two friends made their villages last week. I machine quilted one but Mrs. Ide wanted to try machine quilting on her own so she took home my spare quilting foot. Unfortunately her sewing machine wouldn't let her lower the feed dogs so she did all the quilting with a regular foot and using a backstitch and turning the whole quilt at the corners! That's a lot of work! But she did a beautiful job and you can't really tell the difference (her quilting may be even better because her stitches are even. My freehand quilting doesn't stay so regular.) Mrs. Ide made her Happy Village into a cushion and Mrs. Okusa tried the knife-edge technique that I showed her after hearing about it from Allie and Marcie. Thank you.

Then last night two sisters came for English and we made little mascot bears. Well, they are supposed to be bears. This is all hand sewing but both girls seemed to have a good time (and they chat with me!) Bears can be made in an hour and I can demonstrate while I give instructions in English so they get a bit of studying in too I guess.













And yesterday two other friends made Happy Villages so I will be quilting one of those this week. The other went home as homework...

I'd like to get to my own sewing today too but I'm still at a loss about machine quilting those Mexican Stars! HELP~!