Little Stitches

If I hadn't heard the story first hand, I would have thought it was an urban legend. One afternoon a friend of mine confided in me that while she didn't consider herself very crafty, her husband was. Not only knew did he know how to sew, but he had actually made her wedding dress. And not just any wedding dress, but one of those beautiful traditional Chinese red silk wedding dresses! When I saw her husband some time later, I asked him how he learned to sew and he shrugged his shoulders and simply replied "my mother taught me".

So, while I am not exactly preparing my sons to make their future brides wedding attire, I hope to make them feel comfortable with the idea of sewing. This afternoon I gave Matteo and Nico a bit of burlap in embroidery hoops, large tapestry needles and some yarn while I set up some things for my own sewing project.

Last Summer I bought myself a nice stack of Anna Maria Horner's Good Folks fat quarters. A quilt, a princess and the pea set later... I still had little scraps of fabric that I was hesitant to throw away, because it was just.so.pretty.... I was sure I could find some use for it later! Well, the inspiration came to me over the weekend, when I came across these wonderful camera straps from House on Hill Road (and what a gorgeous blog!). Learning that Erin was out of stock, I decided to try making one myself.
I have to admit that I was very wary of making my own camera strap. With a few of our lenses, the camera can be a bit heavy and I didn't want to risk having any kind of malfunction where I would see my beloved camera in pieces on the ground due a faulty strap of my own making, so I decided to make a simple patchwork cover for the strap.

I patched together some of the fabric pieces, quilted it with bamboo and used some corduroy fabric for backing and slipped the camera strap through it... voila! Instant personal style!

One of my favorite features I was able to put on it was a small pocket to hold lens caps. I think this is Ivan's favorite feature as well, since I'm notoriously bad at finding the caps when it's time to put them on.
With the camera around my neck so often these days, I love that I can also merge my passion for crafting with a strap of my own making, rather than something that blasts the make and model of my gear.

It was a fun afternoon, sewing with my boys. They seemed to enjoy being part of the process, picking out scraps and pretending to sew with their little wooden sewing machine. I'm hoping that years from now, when asked how they learned to stitch, a simple shrug and smile will follow with the words:

"My mother taught me :) "