My good deed for the future

I learned to sew at my grandmothers' knees, when I was 5 or 6 years old.  Since then I have probably sewed on a thousand buttons and mended hundreds of pairs of pants.  Every time I repeat myself with these mundane but so-satisfying chores I think of all the people who don't have those skills, and wonder who should have taught them.  

This summer my son got involved with a new venture, the Louisville Tool Library, a non-profit that owns lots and lots of tools of every sort that Library members can check our for their various maintenance and improvement projects.  At first they were thinking along the lines of shovels, saws, screwdrivers, drills, all kinds of building and fixing equipment.  But then people started donating sewing machines and I perked up my ears.  My son has made himself the guy in charge of workshops, and I volunteered to teach one for total sewing beginners -- today.

With practicality in mind, I decided to teach how to sew on buttons and how to patch holes in pants, both by hand.  We started with threading a needle (my students did great -- everybody succeeded on the first try) and putting a knot at the end.  Then they sewed on some little four-hole shirt buttons.  They could choose whether to sew plus signs or equal signs through the four holes.

After a couple of shirt buttons, we moved on to pants buttons, which of course required a stalk or shank.  They switched to sturdier needles and button-and-carpet thread.  We spent time on how to tie off the thread at the end of the task, and how to bury the ends between the layers of fabric (one of the students thought this was the cleverest thing she'd ever seen...).

Then we put patches on pants holes -- just plain old holes near the knees, no blown-out seams or holes in difficult places like pockets.  They cut patches from drapery-weight fabric, pinned them underneath the holes, and did rows and rows of running stitches to secure the patches.  

I had only three students this afternoon, after some who had signed up for the workshop were no-shows.  At first I was annoyed, but after we got started I was glad to have so few people -- especially the guy who had never held a needle in his life.  I could give individual instruction, attention and encouragement.  So future workshops will be just as small.

I came home exhilarated -- all three of the students said they wanted to come back for more lessons, and the Tool Library people want to have me come back as often as I can.  I want to keep teaching these basics, and one of the students asked if I could teach "visible mending."  I'd also like to hold a mending clinic in which people could bring in their own garments that need help, and we could talk first about whether the problem can actually be repaired, and how to go about it.  I am less excited about teaching newbies how to use sewing machines but I suppose I could suck it up and do it.  Supposedly the Tool Library people have tested out every tool before putting it out on the floor, so the machines ought to all work (even if they're not Berninas...  I am so spoiled... ).

My objective here is not exactly what I shoot for in teaching quilting or other fiber arts.  In those classes I wish that nobody will ever have to use other people's patterns again.  In these, the bar is much lower: that nobody will ever have to throw out a garment because it has a hole or a blown seam or a missing button.  Call it Survival Skills 101 -- with a side benefit of helping save the planet.  A good day all around!

Kid at the sewing machine!

Isaac accompanied his mom to the fabric store last week and saw some fabric with deer.  He wanted to buy it and make a pillow to give to his father, who loves to hunt.  So he came over yesterday to sew.

Although Isaac has been using the sewing machine for four years now, it has always been collage/applique.  All he had to do was pivot the fabric to point in the direction he wanted to sew, and pedal-to-the-metal.  We never cared whether the stitching went right down the middle, or if it caught the entire piece being attached, as long as the seam didn't run off the edge of the base fabric.  He had never attempted to sew a straight seam, nor keep the raw edges to the inside.  So this project was going to be a challenge.

Fortunately, he rose to the occasion.  After all, he's nine years old now!  I cut out the squares of fabric in advance, then put a piece of blue painter's tape on the sewing machine table so he could maintain a half-inch seam allowance.  I marked the corners with a pencil dot so he knew when to stop sewing and pivot.  But he did all the rest.

The hardest part came at the end, after we turned the pillow cover inside out, stuffed it and pinned the last side closed.  It took help to hold the foam rubber away from the pillow edge so the gap could be neatly stitched shut.  But we managed that part too.  Here's Isaac with his finished present:

Isaac's Christmas collage

Isaac wanted to sew something for his mother for Christmas, so I cut a piece of denim from my jeans-for-art box and he rooted around through a bag of scraps to make a collage.

My contribution was to cut the zigzags in the top of the tulips and to stitch on some curly gold wire that we found on the worktable for hair.  Isaac did the rest.  Now that he is eight years old he is an old hand at the sewing machine, having made his first collage three whole years ago!  I know he's getting big because he no longer has to put the foot pedal on a shoebox; a thick book does the trick.  And he wondered if he could set the speed control up a little higher this time....

He wanted to use beads for eyes so we had to do a side project for him to learn how to sew on beads before he could do it on the gift.

In the past we have just made sleeves on the back of his collages and suspended them from a piece of coat-hanger wire or a chopstick, but since this was a Christmas present I thought we should splurge and mount it on a burlap-covered canvas, which I did for him (and did a number on my left wrist by having to hold it at an unnatural angle to avoid sewing into the top stretcher bar).  Since I discovered this product at my local craft store I have been using it for various purposes.  Surprisingly, the burlap has made a good backdrop for delicate silk collages made from old kimono as well as art brut pieces such as this one.

We look forward to our next project.

Happy Valentine's Day from Isaac

Isaac was visiting on Friday and wanted to sew.  When I said yes he dove underneath the sewing table and found the box to lift up the pedal, and got himself all ready to go.  After he had worked on a new collage for a while I realized -- the day after tomorrow was Valentine's Day!

So I found a piece of beautiful hand dyed red fabric sitting on the work table, and cut out two hearts.  Found a piece of hand dyed hemp that had never been put away since I worked on a project, and cut it down to work with the hearts.  Told Isaac that he could make something beautiful for his Mommy for Valentine's Day.  Then he found some sparkly gold sequin fabric on the sewing table (do you begin to see a theme here?  when you never clean your studio you don't have to look very hard for your raw materials).

I changed to red thread, which occasioned an explanation of how the sewing machine uses two threads and the second thread comes from the bobbin.  He was particularly excited at the intermediate step when we had red thread below and green thread on top.

Then he sewed and sewed and sewed and sewed until the hearts were nicely stitched down.  He would sew to where he wanted a sparkly gold square, and I would cut it out of the backing and put it in front of the needle.  He sewed and sewed and sewed some more until he was done.

Last time we sewed, before Christmas, I sat next to him and supervised closely.  This time I worked around the studio unless he needed a gold square placed.  He's getting more independent, and as long as he stays scared of the needle and keeps his hands away, I don't think he can get into too much trouble left to his own devices.

Another kid learns to sew

Isaac, who just turned 5, was visiting last week.  He seemed to be independently absorbed in Curious George and a jelly sandwich, so I went into the studio to do some sewing.  I'm starting to get nervous over two looming deadlines and am seizing upon every opportunity to sew in between the various holiday social events.

I did get some sewing done before he came down to visit, but then he hovered over my shoulder, watching intently as I finished a seam.  "When can I do that?" he wondered.

I thought about it for a bit.  I have previously told him that he has to be 6 before he can use a sharp knife (that seemed sufficiently far away at the time I said so) and I thought maybe 6 would be a good age to start sewing.  But then I thought what the heck and said "you can do that right now."

So we found a box high enough to bring the foot pedal within his reach, and cut a piece of denim from my "old jeans for mending" box.  Grabbed a bag of other people's leftovers from the Crow Barn last fall and had him choose some strips.  Had him arrange a composition on the denim background, set the sewing speed to the lowest end of the scale, and told him to step on the gas.

And so he did!  I showed him how to lift the presser foot and pivot the fabric when he got to the end of the line.  He quickly realized that if he forgot to put the presser foot down again the machine would beep at him and not sew (thank you, Bernina).

He chose some striped strips from my working pile on the table and added them to the composition.  Finally we sewed a sleeve on the back and inserted a chopstick as a hanging rod.  This was supposed to be his Christmas present to his mother, but he couldn't wait that long to give it to her and made her open it yesterday.

I was really proud of him, and he was proud of himself.  He informed me that sewing is a lot of fun and now he has to make some more.  Fine with me!

I realize that I am getting way more laid-back as a sewing instructor than I was with my own kids and then with Zoe 10 years ago.  Rather than start with choosing an artistically cohesive palette, we just grabbed whatever piece of fabric he laid eyes on.  Rather than teach seams, we did raw-edge applique.  Rather than sew the resulting composition into a pillow or a little quilt, we just put on a sleeve and declared it finished.

Rather than tell him where to sew, I would ask him, when he stopped, "Where are you going to sew next?  What's your plan?"  He would decide, and then we would sew that way.  Some strips got stitched down more than others, but that's fine.  Some strips extended over the edge of the denim base, but that's fine too.

I flash back to my own grandmother teaching me to sew.  She wanted me to learn traditional seamstress skills -- no raw-edge applique in Tawas City, thank you very much.  If I sewed a crooked seam I ripped it out and did it right.  That approach worked fine for me, the classic goody-goody overachieving child, but decades later I don't want to use that approach for my own grandchildren; I want them to figure out their own plans.  And in the 10 years between Zoe and Isaac I have loosened up even more.

When I taught Zoe how to sew I sat next to her and "helped" her hold the fabric so the seam would be straight.  (That hidden right hand was grabbing the fabric and tugging it straight.)  But with Isaac I pretty much kept my hands to myself, and you know what?  His sewing turned out just fine.

Zoe sews a skirt

Just before Christmas, Zoe was spending the day with us because school was closed, and she mentioned that she would like to learn to sew some garments.  So we rooted through some drawers and found a suitable piece of fabric (at least 30 years old, I think), then checked the internet to find a skirt concept that she found fashionable (I no longer do fashionable, especially for 14-year-olds, so she's going to have to come up with her own ideas).  We cut the skirt out the old-fashioned way, holding the fabric up to the body, and got it pretty well sewed together before she had to leave.

Since then I put in the zipper and the elastic waist and serged the yoke seam, but she learned to sew a hem by hand, braid a belt, turn a tube to make belt loops, and stitch them on.

Although Zoe has sewed three quilts and a quilted tote bag, this is her first garment.  I'm proud of her, and hope she'll want to come back for a second (and more).

Here's the first time to model the new skirt.  We liked the leggings, but in subsequent wearings we think the denim shirt will have to go.