Budding Students...

Hayley and her mom, Jenn are really coming along in their sewing studies. So far, they've made pincushions, pillowcases and yesterday, they each made a mug mat. Each project teaches them a new sewing technique, and they're doing really well with their lessons.

In this project, they learned piecing, basic quilting techniques, making and applying binding and raw-edge surface applique'. All of these steps are used in creating larger quilts, so once they make their mug mat, they can easily translate the lesson to making an actual quilt. Not bad for their third class, I think.

I let them sort through my scrap box to select any fabrics they wanted for creating their mat. Jenn chose the sea life fabric and then an assortment of blues. Aren't the waves in the panel on the left a nice touch?

This is Hayley's mat. Hard as I tried, I couldn't get the true colors to come through on this photo. I hope they'll bring their mats back next week when they finish the hand stitching on the binding. Then I can take another picture in daylight, instead of artificial light.

She chose an adventurous color palette and was inspired in her choices for trim. She was drawn to a ribbon that I had, but she thought that the back side looked more interesting than the front. (The ribbon is running right up the center of the blue polka dot fabric.) I said I thought she was right. It looked great on her mat. The tumbling squares are bright lime green and hot pink. 

It's so much fun to teach young people. They're adventurous and inspired...and they think outside the box. I teach the techniques and then they run with it. They're enthusiastic and work without bounds. They're pure joy to teach and watch...I can't wait until next week.