Good luck, depends on how much you can stand when they cry. You can try to the locking in a room trick. Sometimes if I know mine is napping in another room I'll sneak up and shut the door quietly so he doesn't know. Then I can sew for awhile before he wakes up and realizes mom has shut the door and starts crying loudly.
When he started to reach into the sewing machine because the needle looked cool going up and down I did get serious about distracting with a spray bottle water. A big squirt of water in the face usually got him mad at me for awhile.