I spent my Independence Day happily working at my new little table while watching The Revolution on The History Channel.  It was a good day!

I am really thrilled with how well my adapted table is working out!  The real test will come on Saturday when I attempt to use the sewing machine!

The first two projects I worked on are from the Sewing Basics class.  The Needle Case comes from the fantastic book- Sewing School.  The Pincushion pattern is a Winky Cherry creation.

Using felt squares will make it easier for young children to trace and cut a pattern for the first time.

The cover of the Needle Case

The inside of the Needle Case

The Sewing School book has a great pattern for an apple pincushion, but I wanted to do something a little different.  Since some of my students will be more advanced, I wanted to create a pincushion that was a little more challenging.  I took the small heart and large heart patterns from the My First Sewing Book pattern set, and decided to make a layered pincushion with decorative stitching.

Decorative Stitching attaches the smaller heart to the larger one

The finished pincushion

Next up was a simple Stuffy with another Winky Cherry pattern.  I can’t tell you how many of these I made as a child in Winky’s classes.  It was great fun getting to feel 8 years old again!

The Bunny Pattern

The Finished Bunny

Next up was patterning out two embroidery projects.  The first one is the classic Winky Cherry name sampler (my mother still has mine somewhere!)

For younger children, the pattern will be transferred in pencil to the gingham fabric.  For more older students, it will be an introduction to counted cross-stitch.

The second project was inspired by a blog that I read on the San Francisco Chronicle’s website, sfgate.  One of the blog’s authors was given a great note by his 7 year old son after being told “because I said so.”  He posted the note and story on the blog and the regular commenters all had a great time with it.  One of them suggested turning it into a “Bless This House” style sampler and the idea was born.  The post is here, but for some reason the comments are showing up.  There was some debate over the spelling of “worst.”  I read it as “werst” but the author thinks it’s spelled correctly.  Here is the pattern I made:

I went with my spelling- werst!

It is hard to read in this picture, but here is my sampler!

I have to work tomorrow, so I probably won’t be able to do anymore samples until the weekend.  Until then- happy sewing!