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| Preparing to make the 2000 mile journey… |
Oh sewing machine, how we’ve missed you! Surely you were so cold and lonely (and dusty!) sitting there on our basement floor, oftentimes covered with dirty laundry. Oh, how we enjoyed the trips to the fabric store you required and completing the beautiful and original projects you made possible! You are such a delight with your patterns and threads and possibilities! But alas, you also require so much time and space, and those things have simply not fit into our crazy weeks at home in Massachusetts with their potlucks and coffee dates and Bible studies and schoolwork and piano practice and guitar lessons and houseguests and….well, you know…life!
We thought Texas might be more kind to you, though, so we packed you up and hauled you 2000 miles south. Did you notice the sunshine? The warmer weather? The little lull in our usual flurry of activity? Maybe you even heard Kayla pleading to take you out of your case, so that she could start creating something?
Did you get excited when you heard us leave for our shopping trip and return with bright fabrics, pink thread, velcro, a rotary cutter, a mat, and LEFT HANDED SCISSORS? Kayla thought she had died and gone to heaven when she was able to glide through paper and cotton like NEVER before! You know, it really is a right-handed world, Little Miss Sewing Machine, and you are just another contribution to the discrimination of our left-handed friends. Kayla was undeterred by your challenges, though, especially after having been equipped with those very special scissors.
That’s right. She cut and she ironed, she threaded your bobbins and needles, she pinned and she stitched, and she only had to rip out a couple of seams. (Which is really a good thing, seeing as we did NOT haul our seam-ripper 2000 miles south, nor did we remember to buy one at the fabric store. Sigh.)
She fused interfacing, basted polyester batting, and even cut out squares for two nine-block quilt squares that served as side pockets for the very cute lunch tote project she chose.
Oh wonderful sewing machine, how you helped her make linings and leave openings, but the challenging foresight you sometimes required….oh my! There was also the fragile and tedious turning inside-out of inner and outer, wrong and right, sides and pieces, but oh how much we remembered and learned!
And how thrilled we were today with our finished project ~ just in time for packing a lunch for our first day of the Texas version of Classical Conversations we’ll start on Monday! It will surely boost our spirits and confidence, as well as give us something to talk about with our new classmates.
So thank you to our lovely and lonely-no-more sewing machine, for the blessing of mommy-daughter time and for delightful accomplishments! We hope there will be at least a few more. And thank you, church, for the time, freedom, and gifts you’ve so generously provided for moments like this!
Way to go Kayla! What a nice lunch tote you made! Sewing is a good and useful skill to learn at your age.