Passing Along my Love of Sewing
The youngest of my 3 granddaughters, June (age 8), has always enjoyed crafts. She has learned to hand sew with some felt-and-yarn projects for kids, but she really, really wanted to learn to sew on a machine. She got her own machine for her birthday in March, but no one in her family sews. So when we visited my son's family in California in July, I had the privilege of starting her on way.
It was a lot of fun for both of us. She learned to thread her machine and wind a bobbin. The dining room table wasn't the ideal location -- she could reach the foot pedal, but had trouble controlling the speed. The machine wouldn't get going at first, then would take off like a jackrabbit. Next time we'll look into a better setup. However, June, like the rest of her siblings, is tall for her age (her mom is 6 ft. tall and her dad about 6'3"), so in another year she probably won't have any problem anyway.
We started out practicing stitching on paper without thread. I printed up some pages with straight lines, squares, and wavy lines to sew on. I think she's a natural! She stayed right on the straight lines and learned to let the machine to the work so she didn't need to "steer." She mastered pivoting at the corners of the squares right away. The curves were a little harder, especially when the machine took off, racing along before she could slow it down. But she persisted.
