Girl Scout Sweat Shop

One of the moms in my troop donated a HUGE roll of upholstery fabric to the troop. Her mom got it to recover a sofa. The sofa never got recovered, and she was looking for a good home for some wayward fabric. Our first badge this year is going to be the eco-action patch, which has do with trying to save the environment. One of the options was to find out about alternatives to plastic grocery bags, so I thought it would be the perfect opportunity to have the girls make their own reusable fabric shopping bags. I've got the handy tutorial that I worked up this summer, and the bags come together in about 10 minutes of sewing time. There was enough fabric on the roll to cut out 16 bags! We'll practice some of our sewing machine skills at the same time, and warm up for the quilting project that we have scheduled for November. While I was at it, I dug through my box of donated fabric and pulled out the rest of the heavier weight fabric to cut out 12 more bags. Rotary cutting is so therapeutic for me, I could just slice fabric into little bits all day long. I'm not exactly sure what we will all do with 28 fabric shopping bags, but I've been mulling over trying to sell them at a Girl Scout leader meeting with a flier inserted about the evils of plastic bags. If we sell them for $5 each, we will have enough money to pay for most of the batting for the nursing home quilts.
I also found a really easy tutorial from Crazy Mom Quilts that uses a tuna can to make an adorable pin cushion. I'm going to have my girls do this as part of the sewing badge, and they can practice fancy machine stitching on the fabric that makes up the sides of the can.
I was at a school coordinator training session all day, and it was just so long. It's all good information, I just have trouble sitting still for that long when I have a never ending "to do" list running through my head. I was disciplined enough to get up early and get my long run in before the training, so at least I could feel smug about already having 10 miles in for the day.
I don't have anything officially scheduled for tomorrow. There is a free symphony concert that is going on for the kids. Every so often it is good to have them do something culturally enriching. They have a petting zoo after when the kids get to try out all sorts of different instruments. Last year we took the whole Girl Scout troop and it was a lot of fun. So I should try to talk everyone into that, but my main agenda item is getting my OHR quilt top put together. All of the blocks are done, and they spent a week laid out on the dining room floor. Then the housekeeper was coming on Thursday and I had to pick everything up and put it away so she could clean the floor. Now it's partially reassembled, but I'd better get it together before the Girl Scout meeting on Monday or I'll have to start over again.