Staycation

Even though I am home all week I have no time for all of the activities I had hoped for. Here it is, half over, and the cabinets are idle in the garage due to heat and other more pressing issues. One opportunity was to spend a day sewing with my granddaughter, Sarina. I don't know quite how it happened but I not only got to spend the whole day with her but she even stayed for supper as we had her great grandmother over. Was that ever a treat! Here's what happened with her sewing (and sewing machines).

When I first offered a sewing machine to Sarina, I picked out an Elna 1500, a nice solid machine that has a dial for stitches,and levers for stitch width and length. This looked pretty easy to me but she struggled with some of the basics: holding threads behind before stitching, lowering the presser foot before stitching, adjusting stitch length for zigzag so it doesn't bunch up, needle unthreading every time. Some of those things are just new habits she needed to learn but I suspected a different sewing machine might help. This time we got out a little Brother XR-7700 that is computerized but has some nice features: speed control, needle up/down, wide variety of stitches, presets for stitch length and width, plus it won't stitch until the presser foot is down. Of course, it was lighter weight, too, and looks more modern so we gave that one a try.

Brother XR-7700

She picked out fabric for a pair of sleep shorts and I found a pattern and here's what she ended up making:

Sarina, 10, modeling her sleep shorts

It was her idea to add the eyelet cotton lace with ribbon even though it took another couple hours to accomplish that embellishment. We even washed them up in hopes of softening up the fabric but it didn't help too much. She said they were so cute she might just wear them around as regular shorts so we both called this a big success.

Lace and ribbon details on Sarina's shorts (love those socks!)

We had so much fun but it literally took all day to make that one pair of shorts. Lessons are slow and sometimes hard (on the teachers and the student). She is making good progress, even did some of the ironing this time although I had to move my hands out of the way quickly a few times. I like this approach to learning: quickly produce something to show for all of your effort so not much time spend on learning how to use the machine but to learn along the way. Remember sewing lines on paper when you learned to sew in Home Ec? I certainly didn't learn like that at home from my mom so didn't think we needed that kind of instruction for Sarina either.  Yet it would have helped with those sewing habits she needed to develop but she is learning them anyway.

What's up next? She said she would like to make a shirt next time to go with the shorts. I better start hunting through my stash to find something that would compliment those butterflies!