Learning from Grandma

Recently Elsie woke up and declared she wanted to learn how to sew. So after lunch I set her up with an embroidery hoop and a needle with embroidery floss on it. I showed her how to lick the thread to thread the needle and then knotted the end and taught her how to do a running stitch. That first day she made a very darling M for Mom and a D for Dad on her first hoop.

Later she showed my mom what she had made and my mom told me that for Christmas this year, she had a quilt kit she wanted to give to Elsie. What an awesome gift idea! It was only later that night that I realized if my mom gave it to her for Christmas my mom would then be gone for the next four months to Arizona, leaving me with a quilt kit and an eager 7-year-old. And this sounded terrible with my very limited sewing skills. So I called my mom and said, “I can’t even reload my bobbin, Mom. I think you had better be the one to teach Elsie how to sew before you go to Mesa.” We decided she could give her the completed quilt for Christmas.

So the next week my mom came over two afternoons in a row to work with Elsie. And now Elsie officially knows more about sewing and quilting than I do! She taught Elsie how to sew in a straight line by taking the thread out of the sewing machine and having Elsie sew on the lines of a piece of notebook paper. Mom said that her mom would teach a lot of 4H girls how to sew each year, and this was how she always began.

I love this grandma-teaching-granddaughter set up. Elsie is very interested and it has been so fun to watch them work together. The quilt is pieced together and next I think they put the back on. But I actually don’t know for sure because I have never made a quilt! So I am learning a whole lot too.

My mom posted a picture of the two of them on her facebook page and so many her friends commented that they were making much more than a doll quilt…together they were making a forever memory.

I just loved that thought.