After a terrible December (thanks, Covid), we're finally back to somewhat of a normal schedule but not really...because what exactly is normal these days??? I'm not sure anymore.
But The Monkey has wanted to learn how to sew since this past summer when I was busy making hundreds of masks. So I bought her a hand sewing book to learn the basics and learn how to not poke herself with a needle (she drew blood multiple times but carried on!). And then she still desperately wanted to learn how to machine sew. So I ended up buying her The Sewing School 2: Machine Sewing book for kids - it had a few projects that I was sure The Monkey could tackle with little supervision, but mostly me hovering over the machine making sure she wasn't going to break my machine.
With her first project she learned a very important lesson: read through the instructions VERY carefully. She didn't read them all (I don't read the instructions for her DIY stuff because I think it's important for kids to learn skills by themselves so that they grow up to be competent and skilled adults, independence is a big skill to learn and this also teaches work ethic and to be proud of the things that you do on your own, so parenting moment included in learning how to sew). The Monkey ended up ripping up a whole project because she missed an important step - marking ears on a stuffy, which can't be done after you've sewn the whole thing inside out. She also realized she started/stopped at the wrong side.
I gave her a few tips and tricks for starting/stopping, which way to pull a finished item so she can cut the threads with the thread cutter on the machine and how to use a chopstick to push out corners in projects.
After she finally got her first project CORRECT, the girl is addicted to using the machine and she absolutely loves it. I'm going to have to come up with a few more Pinterest sewing projects for her to do on her own, with little help from me (other than saying, "BE GENTLE WITH THE PRESSER FOOT!" and also "TURN THE NEEDLE TOWARDS YOU NOT AWAY!"
Onwards we go into a new hobby this year! Hopefully I've inspired her to sew for the rest of her life.
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