Test!

Today was my last day teaching my sewing class.  I have really enjoyed my time with the ladies, and I will miss it dearly, but I have plans to still go by and sew with them once a week.  Yesterday, I gave the ladies a "Final Exam."  I brought in two things that I made at home and they had to choose one and make it without my help.  I brought in a pieced pillow, fairly simple and straightforward, but we hadn't made pillows yet, so it was new.  I put a button on the back as a closure and varied my stitches on the top stitches of the pieced front.  The second item I brought in was a small purse messenger bag style.  We have already made messenger bags and totes, so they knew how to make a bag, but we had never made one this small and I appliquéd a flower on the front, using the stitch we learned when making bracelets.

Two of the ladies chose to go the easy route and make the pillow.  They pieced it together nicely, but failed to put a button enclosure on the back and kept the same zig zag stitch for all the top stitching.  The pillows turned out nicely and looked good, but I was a little disappointed that they didn't take advantage of an easy assignment and really go all the way with it.  But they sewed it and it looked good.

One girl chose to make the purse and I was so proud of her.  She chose to make it out of jeans and even appliquéd a flower on the front.  She is very good at following instructions and recreating something exactly, but hopefully once she becomes comfortable with her sewing, she will venture out and change things up and make them her own.  She was disappointed with her appliquéd flower, but I thought it was very cute and one of a kind.

Because she wasn't as pleased as she wanted to be, she made another one today.  Pretty much the same concept, but the flower turned out better.

Since my students were so good this month, learned so much and became great seamstresses, I thought I would give them a little treat today.  Since it's Ramadan, I couldn't bring in any actual treats like sweets, since that would just be torture because they couldn't eat them until sunset, so I opted to make them something.  I got the tutorial from here, I think these clutch bags are so cute.  I hope they like them, I think they at least liked the gesture.

Well, it's been fun teaching, and it has definitely got my creative juices going.  I have a lot of little projects that I want to make, so hopefully I'll follow through with them :)  One that I've already finished is a checker board for my friend Jamie and I to play on while our husbands are busy playing Chess.

Courtesy of Quilting Arts Digital Magazines