This was our last official week of summer break.  An oxymoron of sorts as I spent three days dealing with school stuff (unpaid, of course since our contract doesn’t start until Monday).  I managed to squeeze in some sewing and actually taught sewing classes this week.

First off, I made a very scrappy baby quilt for a library colleague of mine who recently adopted a child.  Our former library media supervisor hosted a baby shower for the new parents.  Attendees were asked to bring a favorite children’s book to help build the baby’s library.

I decided Levi needed a story-time quilt to snuggle up with while he listens to all of those great stories.  The 16 patch blocks are made up from 2″ squares cut from fabric scraps.  In fact, I cut all of the pieces for this quilt using my Accuquilt GO! cutter. It made quick work of cutting all of those 2″ squares from various size scraps.  Sewing them together was a breeze.  Can’t say the same thing for the white squares, though.  Some came out 1/8″ short, forcing me to “make it work” while assembling the rows.  I had a similar problem with the 5″ charm square die, which the company replaced at no charge.  Hopefully this was a case of operator error not equipment error.  The 6-1/2″ size is quite handy.

I taught not one, but TWO sewing classes this week.  The first was a mother-daughter private and lesson and the second was to a class full of ‘tweens learning to make t-shirt pillow covers.  What a blast.  My friend Shannon was shopping in the store and popped in the classroom to say, “Hi!” when she heard my voice.

The shop owner took a number of pictures of the class in action.  I’ll write up a post when I have permission from all the parents to post the pictures.  Meanwhile, enjoy this photo of my 8th grade friends proudly displaying their handiwork.

Lastly, equipment failure forced me to seek out a better fabric organization solution for my stash.  The oversize 3 drawer rolling cart I’d inherited from a teacher friend finally broke.  I purchased color coded fabric bins from Home Depot and a Martha Stewart 6-cubby organizer to replace the plastic cart.  The color of the bin indicates which color family of fabric is stored inside.  I can tell at a glance what I have.  And yes, the fabric bins come in a wide range of colors.  The 6 drawer plastic organizer to the right  of my new cubby organizer is a really good one – but I really, really like the ease of finding fabric in the bins.  And the bins hold a lot more fabric than the plastic drawers.  Hmmm…

Stash organization using color coded fabric bins and cubby organizer from Martha Stewart available at Home Depot (on left).