Sewing camp was fun. Four kids showed up promptly, ready to work. Or maybe I should say play. Personally "sewing" and "work" don't fit in the same breath for me, though I do run on all cylinders when quilting the middle of a full size. 

I had a bunch of possible projects to get them started, and it didn't take much before the scissors were snipping. There are stuffed animals perched over the windows, and a few were adopted and dressed with capes and crowns. Star babies caught on, and made it home that night to a prime spot on the bed. A few pets will be happy to have pillows, and next winter there will be some fleece hats to keep heads warm. 

One child wanted to make a skirt. I said she could definitely sew one for a doll but we would hold off on one for her. I remembered the time my own daughter was in the sewing room with me, and came across the tiger fabric. She took material into her own hands, wrapped the cloth around her and cut. After one seam on the machine and a ribbon to hold it up she declared it finished.  She was six. While I was proud of her, I wanted to steer this child toward a smaller endeavor. It was only the second day.

Another child announced that he wanted to make gloves. 

"Gloves are pretty hard, In fact I have never made them. Let's try a lunch bag." But he dismissed my guidance, after all what did I know, and found some mulberry fabric. He traced his own hand and started cutting. The effect he had in mind involved fingerless gloves, though I decided not to ask why bother with gloves at all. I left him alone, and helped a girl with her foundation pieced heart. 

When he was ready to sew the two halves together, we changed the setting to zig zag and followed the curving edges between each finger. I did not know if it would work. 

It did. 

He was very pleased with the glove when he put it on. I was too. I told him so. 

We all clapped. Because that is what we do in sewing class. 

He talked about how he was going to wear it all day and maybe all night too. After snack he added a sleeve, which involved hand sewing. Again I was dubious but his plans came together. 

The next day he still had it on and set to making a match. Cutting stretchy fabric to create a fitted garment for a four inch palm is not easy, especially if the day before you had the luxury of cutting with your dominant hand, and frustration set in. I offered to help but he was determined. There was a pile of scrunched and discarded fabric by his feet as he kept trying. Finally he brought the two halves, carefully lined up and I let down the presser foot.

The machine jammed, with a lump of mulberry cloth sucked into the throat plate. He was agitated. 

It seemed too complicated to go into the perils of navigating a quarter inch seam on the very edge of wiggly fabric going around the bend. I resisted the urge to remind him that I had said no before he started. 

We wrestled with the seam ripper, and the lint, and the chewed up fabric. This was trying his patience. 

He decided that one was enough. 

Sometimes the answer is no. We pray for an outcome, and it may or may not come to pass. Or maybe it arrives much later, on a vastly different time frame. 

Other days the image in our head pops out and becomes real. Which is a good excuse to break into applause.