School bags and horses

Last week was long awaited midterm holidays, so Charlie sat down and played with treadle for the first time. 

After I played a bit with sewing machine embroidery last month, Charlie was itching to try it herself. 

Design ideas were no problem for Charlie as everything needs to be about horses. She made several drawings, copied it roughly on the black fabric and off she went. 

She had wanted to make a bag for herself for a while, and week-long holidays were just perfect for such a project.

The densely quilted bag was a very good project to get treadle motions under the belt. It took several broken threads until she learned the smooth forward motion, but in two hours she was able to put the needle exactly where she wanted at exactly the speed she wanted. 

The bag also has several rather advanced inside pockets, densely quilted (the only black fabric I had at hand was very soft, so dense quilting was needed to make the bag hold the shape and the weight expected from a hard working school bag. 

In some places there are 18 layers of fabric and the batting – thank God for the durability of an old Singer! 

What impressed me – she just kept working, hour after hour, and in three days her bag was ready – exactly the right size, right design and all that. For a 12 yo  it is rather impressive.