Mom taught me how to sew when I was young. I even had an inexpensive sewing machine that I used to sew doll clothes. As an adult, I’ve not made clothes, but it’s been handy to have the power to make curtains, blinds, pillow covers, and now masks of all things. This weekend, it became clear that we need more than the two masks a piece I made for us back in April.

I used the opportunity to teach Hannah the basics of sewing. We moved our mask operation to the porch so as not to miss the lovely weather.

Hannah has a good bit of her father’s “engineer” in her. She couldn’t simply trust, “this is how you do it.” She had to break it down, step-by-step, and understand how the machine works.

I think she’s hooked.

While overseeing the mask making, I finished my “found on the side of the road” table makeover. We snagged this checkerboard table a week or so ago, and I pondered what to do with it.

As we’re not big checker players, I decided to paint it up and decoupage it with a nautical chart print leftover from this Spring’s bedside table project for Hannah.

I primed it and then painted it with exterior Benjamin Moore Grey Timber Wolf Paint.

A nautical chart of our piece of the Maine coast fills in the checkerboard area. I finished with umpteen (meaning too many to count) coats of exterior polyurethane. It’s the perfect table for our happy screened-in porch.

It’s nice to have had such a productive weekend on shared projects!