Wednesday, September 12, 2007

Wednesday items

First of all, please notice table is tidier:

I have been making several things for my crazy exchange partners, but cannot show you until they let me know that the items have arrived. Fair is fair! But I have been busy.

Last week-end we had a delightful "Indian" summer camping week-end at Alder Lake. Visited a private zoo called Northwest Trek. Lots of animals living in confined areas, but not in any cages.










Tuesday began my first sewing class for refugee women. Four of the five women spoke some English, one only Cambodian. There will be another Somali woman joining us next week. The three Somali women there asked for a lot of translation. Two of those women had no experience with a sewing machine. So this was a very basic introduction to what are parts of the machine and generally how does it work. We practiced first on pieces of paper, without thread in the machine, just to learn to guide the movement under the needle. Then we moved on to threading the machine and in some cases, to filling the bobbin. And then using scraps and pieces of donated fabric, just practiced to get the feel of fabric and needle and thread. Our first project will be a carrier bag made with upholstery fabric. Here are some photos. Some of the women did not want their pictures taken.



I think you can see how she tried very carefully to create concentric lines of sewing. [on the strawberry fabric] This is going to be a very fun and challenging few weeks.




This morning our local quilt guild met and after a long business meeting, had a presentation of quilts and slides (of quilts) by Joen Wolfrom. She does some magnificent work, especially at doing color gradations. Ah inspiration!

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