At nursery the grandchildren have a charity project under way, collecting Christmas presents for the dogs at the shelter. Every group has a box of its own, and the children bring toys or food or bedding and the like for the dogs. The group that collects the most presents gets to take the presents to the shelter.
I had the idea of reducing my fabric scraps and sewing a few mats for the dogs, but together with the boys. So that they take part in it. Today was Mathias's turn. I had cut him a big pile of pieces in different colours. His role was to decide how big he wanted to make it (I had bases in 3 sizes waiting), to choose the colours himself and to lay them out into a pattern. We sewed it together too.
In between he went round my machines with a small brush and cleaned them. All of them one by one, every last curve and crack.
Then we laid the layers together, pinned them with safety pins and I sewed together the base fabric, the fabric with the squares and, on top of everything, the wadding. On the side I left an opening for turning. The boy got to trim the edges with scissors. The cutting was what he liked best. He chopped the whole scrap box into tiny fragments. He said himself: "You have a lot of work. But I have little work and a lot of rubbish."
Another lovely comment: "Something got into my mouth that tastes strongly of fabric."
Meanwhile I quilted the edges of the mat all the way round and the layers into squares as well. That way it keeps its shape better both under a dog and after washing.
The boy was very businesslike and the work is neat. In the end he packed the work up himself and will take it to nursery tomorrow.
We will do the same job with the little brother some other day.
