Jo Still Sews

I've been going through my old blog and cleaning it up for a new use. I hadn't done much with it before Alan and I decided to combine our blogs into the Gratz Industries you see here now, and most of the posts I was happy to delete. But not this one. This one is from July 26, 2006, right after we got Jo her first sewing machine. . .

Jo Sews

I'm just getting ready to start a new project - a messenger bag in magenta and orange. In the meantime, we bought Jo a sewing machine. She's learning hand sewing in school, but she sees me on the machine all the time and wanted to give it a try. I'm not turning an almost-4-year-old loose on my very nice machine, so she got her own. It's impossible for her to get her finger under the needle and the speed adjusts to two settings. That last feature is especially nice. Even if she has a lead foot on the floor pedal, the machine doesn't go out of control.

We spent a day following lines on a piece of paper - no thread, just the needle. Then we made a beanbag. Now she wants to make a quilt. How can I say no to that?

We went out this weekend and she picked out the fabric. The squares are all cut and she's started sewing. She's not very good about following the seam allowance lines on the machine, so I draw the stitch line on the fabric and she follows it. She inspects each piece very carefully when she takes it out of the machine. If she's off the line at all - even by a couple of threads - she tells me she'll focus more next time and stay on the line the whole way. Here are some of her first blocks. I'm so proud!

Awww. . . so cute! Back to the present - Jo just today pulled that quilt out of the UFO basket and added a row of blocks to it. Just three more rows to go and soon she'll have a twin-sized quilt, started when she was 3 and finished at age 7. I can't wait!

Here it is so far. And, for the record, she's not using a "toy" machine anymore. She's upgraded to her grandmother's old Singer. The focus is still the same. . .

Happy sewing!