Busy little bees - two birds with one stone

The other day I showed you the pictures of Sarah participating in the practice expedition for her Duke of Edinburgh Bronze Award

The award is in four parts: Expedition, Skill, Service and Activity

As you can see from previous photos the expedition is pretty much self explanatory. Two days walking and orienteering 15km each day (about 10-12 miles) and camping out the night between carrying all supplies with you.

Sarah just has to participate in the real thing now, without hands on guidance from leaders etc, to complete the expedition part of the award.

Going back about a year or so Sarah helped out at a Church Children's Club once a week for a minimum of an hour each time for a total of three months. This fulfilled the 'service' section of the award

The activity part is usually a physical activity - Sarah chose trampolining as you're encouraged to try something you've not done before.

With any one of the three sections; skill, service and activity, you can choose to extend your three months to six. Unsurprisingly Sarah decided to do the activity item for six months.

She now has to do a three month stint at a skill. Lots of deliberation went into the subject for this section and initially she was pretty amenable to the idea of doing patchwork and quilting under my guidance.

Then she went off the idea and thought she might like to have a go at building a doll's house.

Finally, when we looked at all the pro's and con's, she returned to the P & Q idea, she'll save the dolls house idea for a higher level in the future, but pinning both her and I down to a specific hour each week was almost impossible. So much easier if you join a club and go to a certain venue at a set time and day.

Then I had a brainwave!

Sarah's friend Megan is very interested in fabric and sewing and often looks longingly at things hanging around my sewing area. So as the pair of them usually hang around our house for an hour or more after school gassing to other mates on MSN on the computer I suggested that both Megan and Sarah might like to have a go at each making a patchwork quilt one teatime each week. Megan was delighted and of course having her mate working alongside her will keep Sarah's nose to the grindstone.

The hidden bonus in all this is that Megan took her Art GCSE a year early (getting an A by the way) and so, although I hadn't realised when I made the suggestion, is doing Textiles this year. The P&Q will be an added project for her to put towards her final assessment.

Double Whammy - two birds with one stone!!!

Here are the two girls putting together the start of their initial block - Rail fence.

Sarah has 2 metres of a lovely deep pink fabric with yellow and green flowers and purple spirals on. She's matched this with a checkered yellow, a mottled lime green and a deeper purple. Megan, on the other hand has had to take pot luck with my stash, so although she's working with a palette of bright pink and turquoise hers will be slightly more scrappy.

We've decided they'll do nine 12" blocks which, with sashings and borders, should give them a 4ft square lap quilt each.

It was lovely to pass on my skills to a willing audience but boy is it harder teaching than actually doing it yourself.