Some members of the Rip ’N’ Sew club of Sun City West recently made 30 non-backpack book bags at the request of a fourth-grade teacher in the Kyrene School District.

Veteran teacher Susan Peine asked for book bags that slip over the back of a pupil’s chair. The book-holding pocket and the books in it face away from the learner. The pupil’s back rests on plain denim against the chair’s back.

Club members who volunteer with the Sewing from the Heart subgroup used donated denim in several colors and denim from thrift-store jeans to make the book bags. Club members Janet Lennon embroidered half the bags with Disney characters while Marian Clish embroidered the rest with Hello Kitty and the school mascot, a shark.

Before embroidering anything, Clish and Lennon talked with Peine to learn what she wanted to adorn the bags.

Although embroidery machines did the sewing, Clish said it takes 90 minutes to two hours per book bag to get everything set up properly and do the embroidery. Do the math and that’s 45 hours to 60 hours to embroider all 30 bags.

Peine teaches at Kyrene de la Esperanza Elementary School, 14841 S. 41st Place, in Phoenix. Her classroom will be full of new book bags and new pupils July 28, when the school year begins.

Kyrene’s district includes all of Ahwatukee and parts of Chandler, Guadalupe, Tempe and the Gila River Indian Reservation. Kyrene enrolls approximately 15,000 students in kindergarten through eighth-grade.