Bed upgrade

Or, at least, I hope these are upgrades. I had to go to the fabric store for a project I'll discuss at the end and found some 'red tag' (read: CHEAP!) fabrics that I thought would make nice new pillow covers.

I don't know why the color is the way it is in this shot, but I liked it, so I'm sharing!

I'm working on a project for a nearby Head Start program. The children are mostly developmentally delayed in various ways. For example, they are kindergartners who have not mastered tasks like buttoning, or technically stated, "bidirectional" activities. This activity mat will help them use both hands by sliding the orange bead on the cord, through the tabs and tunnels to the end and back to the start again. Some mats were already purchased but the children do not like them. One of the beads is a dolphin and the kids don't like to make it go backward, so they won't do it. So, I just got these wooden round beads to use so they don't have to make anything go backward or upside down. I have about 4 or 5 more to create which will take some time. Surprisingly, this one was very time consuming. The tabs and tunnels are made of lycra and even though it doesn't fray, I thought the edges should be finished and not just cut. I need to make the other mats more complicated but it's hard to fit a lot on the size the teacher asked me to make them and sewing with lycra is not so easy. It wants to stretch and not stay in place. The teacher asked me to make them and then asked WHEN I would have them finished. I guess I know what I'll be doing this weekend! After these, I might kind of be out of favors for awhile.