Silk purse from a Pig’s Ear

I unpicked this sorry excuse, restitched the letterbox opening, unpicked his wobbly stitches, snipped the corners, turned it out, and top stitched round the opening with a decorative stitch.

At the end of the summer term the 12 year old brought home his textiles project to be “finished”; not that he had any intention of finishing it himself; if I hadn’t emptied out his school bag it would have been slid surreptitiously into the bin when no-one was looking. What a pig’s ear, supposedly a peg bag, if I had been his teacher I would have been ashamed to let that out of the class room. Two pieces of fabric right sides together and stitched round a letterbox opening then turned out without snipping the corners, so there’s no way it would ever lie flat to be top-stitched. Consequently the top-stitching was a mess.
Then he’d corrected some stitching after putting the back on, stitching through all three layers, goodness knows how one would get the pegs in, or out again. It had lain in a sorry heap on the kitchen counter since I found it, not wanting to throw it out and yet despairing of ever getting him to complete the task.
On Saturday he had a friend over; in half an hour of ‘idle moment’ while waiting for his friend’s mum to arrive to collect him, and before dashing out to buy shoes, I unpicked this sorry excuse, restitched the letterbox opening, unpicked his wobbly stitches, snipped the corners, turned it out, and top stitched round the opening with a decorative stitch.

On returning home with shoes, (success, managed to get a 12 year old boy to town, shoes tried on and said shoes bought, admittedly identical to the last pair just a size larger, without recourse to begging or promising fast food as an inducement), I added another decorative border and stitched the back on. The hanger needs to be wrapped with ribbon to make it look nice but, it might make a suitable gift from a small boy to an aged relative, and Christmas is coming.
I suggested he take it to show his teacher, that idea did not go down well, maybe I’ll just e-mail her the link to my site, or maybe not.