George learning to sew

My parents brought over my Grandma's sewing machine for me so I can relearn to sew in my spare time. :) I sewed a rice pillow for a gift along with a cover after a bit of instruction from my Mom and thought maybe I could do this. Most likely all I will get done is hemming some pants and such. George has wanted to learn to sew for awhile. We saw a book that has patterns for boy things to sew and so he has been asking for quite awhile.

George cutting apart old jeans.

My Mom gave George a brief instruction of how to use the machine and got him sewing straight lines. Next he began sewing large squares together. Then he cut them into small squares, sewing them together and made a doll pillow for Missy and a small blanket for Seppy. I had given him a few pointers but other than that he has taken off on his own. After picking out some remnants at the fabric store he came home and in no time at all he had made a shirt. He has to tweak it a bit yet but I couldn't believe he figured out how to sew a little shirt for a stuffed bear.

Shirt George whipped up. He then made a bag for Seppy out of scraps of denim from his latest project.

Shirts and pillows were not enough and so now George has a big project he is working on. I remembered seeing a quilt made out of denim and knowing we had a pile of jeans with holes waiting to be made into shorts thought George could maybe tackle that. He is doing a rag quilt with denim and then flannel that he picked out on the back so that he doesn't have to be perfect with it and then there is no stuffing it or finishing off edges. It will have frayed edges all around (my Mom makes flannel blankets like this). Now all of his brothers want him to make them a quilt also.

Here are two finished strips showing the front and then the flannel back.

I am sure excited about the prospect of this. George learning to sew can save me so much time and he can do all of my projects! He already knows how to operate the machine better than I do. I told him he can take in all of Missy's pants that fall off of her. He wondered how to do that and I told him to which he replied, "that doesn't sound comfortable." He suggested that we put in the elastic with buttons as the pants I typically try to buy for her. Sure George, you figure that out for me!