My Trash, Their Treasure

On Sunday we had our family Memorial Day picnic (I have almost zero photos - but if you want to see how we roll you can check out this post I wrote last year). It was wickedly hot, and having oodles of people around when you're trying not to sweat while sitting perfectly still can wear on the temperament. I was trying to think cool thoughts when two of the sweetest little girls ever came out on the porch with their little hands behind their backs. They marched over and presented their treasures and said "Are you really throwing this away?" In their mitts were some fabric scraps I had tossed from my most recent projects (I keep a separate waste basket next to my sewing table - it's not like they were digging through the kitchen trash....just want that part known :)  I told them I was and their faces lit up like sunshine exploding into rainbows. They ran back inside and pulled every single scrap out of my waste basket and divided them evenly and put them in zip-lock bags.

One of my favorite things about putting a couple of kids together and letting them be without adult conversational intervention is listening to the cute little things they say. Such as : "Let's go in the dining room where we can spread out our material and plan." I was thinking "Yes!! That's what I do!" And "Let's get my grandmom to cut the big pieces in half so we both have the same." And then my favorite: "I bet we could make purses." And boy did they. They found a piece that I had been practicing free-motion quilting on and made two little "bags" out of it (just large enough for their toy cell phones).

They didn't even care about all those loose threads hanging off. That's the best thing about kids - everything is amazing and wonderful to them.

 Here's a fancy faux zipper, with some neat-o-rific staple sewing and candy-striper handles. I love kid imagination.

 And here they are modeling their little treasures. My blur tool wasn't working so I gave them rainbows (I'd love to show you their beautiful eyes but I'm wary of putting kid faces on my blog, especially when they're not mine - that's why you very rarely see Z-man on here.

So what I had considered useless were absolute treasures to behold to them. They recognized the simplest things necessary to make something and made it work from there. I need to hire a few kid consultants for when I'm making things difficult for myself by overthinking them.

That's it for now - I've been busy busy busy sewing this week. Check back Saturday - I'll have the materials list up and some witty banter about options for the sew-along. Ta for now!