Kiddo's first project

Kiddo has been practicing her straight stitch almost every night now for the last week or so. She even tried curves on her own without me showing her!

So far she has had lessons on:
Machine safety
Keeping the fabric steady
Controlling the foot pedal speed
Seam allowances
Pattern tracing
Notions and their use
Staying organized with her notions
Taking her time
Threading the machine & needle
Replacing the bobbin
Back Stitching
Pattern instructions & pictures

I will be reinforcing these as we go along.

She made her first item today! An eye mask from Simplicity 3988. I did the elastic for her but she did the cutting, applying the interfacing, pattern markings (I also had her mark her stitch lines using a guage), tube turning for the strap.

she was very proud!

& so was I! Next we will work on the pants, but I'll be doing the elastic again & probably the hemming. She's not quite ready for that yet.

Today mom dropped this off for me! A Brother XL-3027! She's had it for years and never used it. She's also going to throw a couple of bucks towards the Huskylock! I ended up missing hanging out with Cidell & Nicegirl but ummm.... it was kinda worth it today.

My Singer CG-550 works just fine - perfectly actually. I recently re-read the manual and realized I was doing a couple of things wrong! My Brother XL-3010 (which now belongs to kiddo) is working pretty well also I re-skimmed the manual and learned a few new things about that too. I think I will take it in to JoMax to see if it needs a tune up or whatever, it really is a solid little machine after all these years (10).

Now I will spend some time reading up on this XL-3027 before I make anything with it.