Saturday, January 8, 2011

Training Her Young

Our family got a new-to-us sewing machine for Christmas.  5-year-old Kristine was itching to use it and started begging to make a quilt.  I said, "What kind of quilt are you going to make?  Draw a pattern."


Okay, a Christmas quilt.  I had some cheapy Christmas scraps to cut up for her.  She laid it out and said, "It needs white stuff in between."  I cut up white strips for her.  I'm a little bit of perfectionist and control freak, so I stood over her and guided the fabric while she pushed the pedal.  "Stop, stop, stop. Okay, go.  Hey, pay attention . . . go."

After she went to bed, I started quilting it when my last needle broke.  I took it as a sign . . . Kristine needed to quilt it.  Deep breath, relinquish control.


She spent the next few days testing out all the fancy stitches on our new machine . . . one inch of blanket stitch, one inch of snowflakes, couple inches of zig zag, a few spots where it got stuck and she kept sewing leaving a big clump on the back.


I think she just liked pushing the buttons.  I was tempted to unpick a few spots like these pucker spots, but I resisted.


I finally convinced her to straight stitch down each row of sashing just so I could get my pins back.  She still wants to decorate each square, but for now I think she has lost interest.  Doesn't she look proud?


2 comments:

Annie Crow said...

Very proud! How cool.

Danielle said...

Yes, very cool. So impressive what she did, what you did, and what you didn't do. It is challenging to teach our own to sew. I'm afraid I haven't done well in this area. Sigh.