Passing skills to another generation

It has been a very busy three weeks here at Chez Pooh with the start of school for all inhabitants.  The summer flew by and I did not get around to many of my plans.  But then the lack of a real schedule is one of the joys of the summer!

One of my goals during the summer was to start teaching Offspring some basic life skills.  Like sewing.  Now, some people would argue that males will not use sewing skills, but as we all know, a lack of basic knowledge can limit the possibilities before they even begin.  Pants may need hemming, buttons always fall off.  If you can sew, home decorating becomes a whole lot cheaper and oh, the possible Halloween costumes (and I have had to be very creative to meet the imagination of Offspring)!  Okay, so, it didn't happen this summer.  Well, it sort of did.  One August afternoon I drew a pattern on a sheet of cardstock, removed the thread from the sewing machine, put in an old needle, and introduced terms like "pressure foot" and "seam allowances".  I remember doing this when I started in 4-H in the fourth grade.  I made my pattern a little more interesting by including a favorite toy logo.  There were lots of corners and curves, long lines and short.  And he did great!  Didn't stray off the lines hardly at all!  Not that that was any surprise-the kid has a phenomenally long attention span (which made kindergarten very difficult) and the attention to detail that plagues his parents and saturates his genes.

He was so excited that he was immediately asking to sew on real fabric.  So I dug out a long skinny strip and let him learn to hold two edges together while feeding the fabric.  But the straight stitch was not good enough so it was on to the zigzag.  His fascination with the only two buttons for fancy stitches were next on his agenda.  While the interest was there, I wanted to run with it.  So what to do next?

His Aunt Pogonip at Meadowsweet Cottage had made a pillowcase for him not too long ago and I thought that would be a good place to start.  Straight lines, no gathering, not too much fabric.  So, just before school started, we headed off to the land of fabric and he picked out three prints that fit his requirements for the beginnings of a new bedroom theme.  With help from Robin's pillowcase tutorial, it was so very easy.  So here is the finished project, complete with french seams, I will have you know.  I will admit that I cut the fabric, pinned everything in place, did the ironing, and helped with the stitiching over the points where there were ten layers (or more) of fabric.  So he didn't totally fly solo.  If I was a judge at a county fair, he would definitely earn a blue ribbon!  I'd go so far as to say he did an out-of-this-world job!