Rachel sews a pillow

Last month, right before we were released from primary, Marian and I spent a couple hours at the church putting a bulletin board together to better display the annual theme for primary (something we should have done in, oh, January). Our previous board was from a sharing time lesson we did in November and sadly proclaimed, "I AM    HANKFUL" (because someone had pulled off the T in thankful).

Our bulletin board was in desperate need of a makeover, so even though we knew we wouldn't be around to enjoy the fruits of our labour, we put a little something together anyway. I think it turned out nicely considering we went into the project without a solid idea of how we wanted it to turn out.

Miriam took this picture of Marian and me by the board:

Clearly she needs more practice with the camera, but you get the picture (literally—it's right there).

Whoever put up the old bulletin board display had brought in a piece of fabric to cover the board (we put our Thanksgiving display on top of it). By this time—years after it had originally been put up—the fabric was stained in places and was pock-marked with thumbtack holes.

"I'm just going to toss this unless you want it," Marian said. 

At first I said, "Go ahead and toss it," but then I got to thinking about other uses for it. 

I'm always thinking of other uses for things. It's a blessing and a curse, really. It turns me into a bit of a packrat (not a blessing) but it saves us money every now and again (blessing) and helps out the environment a bit (another blessing). Reduce, reuse, recycle, I always say.

"Actually, I'll take it," I said. "Rachel's been wanting to learn how to sew and this will be perfect for her."

I have no attachment to the cloth whatsoever so she can do whatever she wants with it and I won't feel like she's wasting it or whatever. And she loves blue.

So I brought it home and bequeathed it to Rachel.

She found it today when we were cleaning her room and asked if she could make something. I told her that she absolutely could. She asked if she could make a dress. I suggested she start with something simpler—like a pillow. 

We've had some cloth bags the girls' sheets came in kicking around the house (see? I'm a saver) and we'd already turned one into a pillowcase for a mini pillow we had. Rachel decided she wanted to make a pillow that size for the other case. So that's what we did. 

We cut out a big rectangle and folded it in half and then I made little dots all around the edge with a permanent marker, strung a needle on a thread, and told Rachel to connect the dots. She did great!

By dinner time she'd already finished most of the sewing and was ready to flip her work the right way out so that she could stuff it (with the remains of an old pillow that I've been stealing stuffing from for projects for years now—guys! I seriously have a problem!). She was having some trouble getting the corners to unfold all the way.

"You can just stick your hand in there and poke the corners out with your finger if you want to," I told her.

"Oooh!" she crooned. "That will be kind of nice to stick my own hand in my own hand-eye-work."

"Hand-ee-work," I said.

Apparently she hasn't heard the word handiwork used very often and wasn't quite sure how to pronounce it (which is fine because I recently had a similar problem with the word anathema (let's just say the second syllable is stressed, not the third—who knew?!)).

This has nothing to do with sewing, except that Benjamin was sitting on my lap while I was taking pictures of Rachel and he decided he needed his picture taken as well. That's strawberry juice on his face, for the record.

And this is a picture of him...trying to eat my face, or something:

We waited until after bath time to stuff the pillow and, believe me, a fun time was had by all! Miriam and Benjamin were having a grand ol' time pulling that old pillow apart. Rachel had fun overseeing (and helping with) the stuffing of the new pillow.

And here's Rachel with the completed pillow (but without the case):

It's pretty comfy!

Now I'm in trouble because Rachel wants to actually learn to sew. I already told her that I can't teach her because I don't actually know how to sew, myself, but she doesn't believe me because I just taught her how to sew a pillow. It's true that I helped her with the pillow, but that is about as far as my talent reaches...