It happened! Finally, after years and years of waiting… my son had his first sewing class in school! Somehow he talked his teacher into letting him do his sewing projects with me instead of doing the standard projects. They were supposed to chose between making an owl or a donkey. Yup, a donkey. He had other ideas. That’s my boy… challenge the norm!

I remember my first Home Ec project. Do you remember yours? I made a heart shaped pencil case. Being who I am I modified it to look like a pair of lips. It was kind of a hideous project, especially the left over fabric they gave us to use. It reeked with, “you’re going to botch it so why would we bother buying you the nice stuff.” Fast forward to present time and my son, being who he is, decided he wanted to make a Tribble (any Trekkies out there?) and a creature called a Crawling Horror from one of his favourite games, Don’t Starve.

Do you remember the Star Trek episode “The trouble with Tribbles”? This might jog your memory:

So Tribbles are these puffy, furry creatures and I discovered what the trouble with Tribbles are… Nope, not that these furry creatures are invading the starship Enterprise. They are made out of freaking fun fur!!!

Okay, I’ll admit, maybe I shouldn’t have held up the fun fur as a moustache while we were making the Tribble. I was going more for a smile from my son (or at least an eye roll) than an itchy up my nose thing. I played with fun fur making Christmas stockings this year but this particular fun fur glued itself to my cutting mat! In the end it was cool – it did clean up but I was a little worried there for a while. You gotta love how forgiving fun fur is… oh look I can see the seam, scruff, scruff… gone. Perfect!

With this project he also had to sew on a button. He decided to sew on a little pink button. Can you guess why? Nope, it’s not an eye.  Being the 13 year olds we are (well at heart for me) we took quite a bit of delight in people asking what the button was for as they tapped it with their finger. It’s the Tribble’s anus! Snort!

Now, what the heck is “Don’t Starve” and what the heck is” Crawling Horror”? Don’t Starve is a video game my son started playing this summer. Basically you’re a little character and you have to try and survive. You have to manage feeding yourself, building a shelter and fending off creatures, some real some not so real. And this all happens through day and night, spring, summer, fall and winter cycles.

A Crawling Horror goes under the category of one of the not so real of creatures that appears during the darkness of the night. In making him we started out by buying two sheets of black felt. Felt was perfect because we didn’t have to finish seams or turn anything out. We made up a pattern using a grid method to make it large enough. My son, pinned the pattern, and cut it out.

Then he sewed around all the edges, in and out, around, start, stop, go, stop, turn. Stop and repeat. We had to make sure we got all the edges because we didn’t want any stuffing getting out, right! I wasn’t allowed to take any pictures of this part though… Fair enough as that could be a bit unnerving.

We left the eyes open so we could use them as a way to stuff the creature.

Stuff,

stuff,

stuff!

Finally I helped by sewing the eyes closed for him, which was a bit tricky.

Ta-Da!

So there you go, two Home Ec projects that my son made! We are very proud of him for all his hard work and thinking outside the box! What did he sign up for as electives for next year?… Foods and Drama. Well, it was nice while it lasted. Good thing I have two sons!