Sew What! Community Sewing Group Sews Cute Flowers

Yesterday was another day of sewing class for our Sew What! Community Sewing group at the Jeffersontown Library.  Our regulars are so faithful in showing up month after month, and yesterday was no exception!

The class centered around making "Cute Flowers" from a class that I taught at Austin's Sewing Center in March of this year, and at the Bullitt County Cooperative Extension office in June.  These flowers are all made by hand and are great for embellishments on headbands, on purses and tote bags, as brooches, or any other application your creative mind can envision.  The rick rack flowers are taken from Kari Mecca's book, Sewing With Whimsy.  The book can be purchased on her website at www.karimeaway.com., or if you live in the Louisville, KY area you may purchase it at Austin's Sewing Center in Fern Creek.


Sew What! students had a fund workday learning new techniques on making three different flower projects: felt flowers, sheer ribbon flowers, and rick rack flowers.

 We made four layers of petals cut out of felt, then stitched them together in the center to make a pretty flower to use as embellishment on headbands, totes, purses, or as a brooch with a pinback sewn onto the back side.

This flower was made complete when some black eyelash yarn was added to the center behind the button.  (I forgot to take a photo of the completed flower - sorry!  It really looked finished with the yarn.)

 Here, students are working on cutting the felt flower petals and layers of organza to place in between the felt layers for their project.

My students are so very creative and I really enjoy seeing what ideas they come up with after I've given them some hands-on instruction!

This felt flower is the sample I made as I was going over the printed instruction sheet.  I layered the felt petals with some organza and some sparkle bridal tulle to give it a different look.  It will look good on a lilac knit top I have, or on my pink one, don't you think?

 This student had just completed her rick rack posie flower project from Kari Mecca's book.  We ran out of time to complete the other two rick rack flowers I wanted to teach, so we'll continue this class next month.

If you'd like to learn how to make these cute flowers, please join us on the fourth Thursday at the Jeffersontown Free Public Library from 1:00 - 4:00 p.m.  We'd love to have you join us!

Sew What! Community Sewing Group is at it Again!

Our community sewing group, that meets at the Jeffersontown Public Library every 4th Thursday, has been hard at it making shoulder bags for our 2012 community service project.  So far, the students have made 167 bags since January! 

The original intent was to send bags to a Haitian orphanage to be used for school bags by the children so they would have a bag of their own for their belongings.  It turned out that the school master let us know that they had enough bags for the current school year, so I needed to look for another group who has need for the bags.

As God would have it, a group at Walnut Street Baptist Church is planning a mission trip to Applachia later in the month of May.  The group leader had asked me for any extra bags that wouldn't be needed for Haiti, so I called her and told her that I could provide her with 24 bags.  Needless to say, she was thrilled!

 One of my students called on a Saturday to say she had 11 more bags finished and could she meet me at church for pickup since she couldn't come to our April class.  I picked them up and then delivered them to Walnut Street the following Monday.  That made 35 bags for the Appalachia trip!




 

 So, at our regular class meeting last week, two more students brought plastic bag, after plastic bag, full of more shoulder bags - 132 in all!  They also brought a bag full of more Comfort Caps for two of our local cancer treatment centers (our community service project for last year)!







All of the fabric for these bags was donated to our group by a fabric store in a neighboring county.  I want to throw out a tremendous thank-you to everyone who has contributed the fabric, thread, and their sewing time to this project!  What a blessing all of you are, and will be, to the recipients who will have their very own bag for personal belongings!

I'll post another picture of the bags as soon as I can get them sorted out for a photo-shoot.  Check back in a few days to see how beautiful these bags are!