Lesson One And Yoyos

 Well, the first sewing lesson went pretty well. I told my young pupil that if he learnt to sew by hand, he'd be able to sew any time, without having to have access to a machine. He liked that idea, so we were off! He learnt running stitch and back stitch. I was impressed with how quickly he grasped the principle of back stitch. I found some fabric with dots on to act as a guide. Next week we'll try chain stitch. He liked the look of detached chain stitch, or lazy daisy. 

I 'inherited' a large bag of fabric scraps, along with the craft group job. I did the 'new broom' thing and threw half of it away - they were too small to be of use for anything. Some of the remaining scraps are also pretty small, but I thought they'd work for yoyos. I haven't made fabric yoyos before and it turned out to be less simple than I supposed. I read through this tutorial, which helped, but I had to experiment to decide on size and experience the various pitfalls. For instance, it's important to sew really close to the edge, otherwise the yoyo has a horrid lump in the middle. 

I sewed my yoyos to a circle of felt to make a mat to put my teapot on. There may be some craft group members who can't or don't want to make yoyos, so I made another, simpler version:

The next meeting is on Friday.