I started trying to make doll clothes when I was 6 by cutting a hole in the middle of a men's handkerchief (my dad's) and got the tar beat out of me. Then Mom showed me her sewing machine which she didn't use very much. Mom showed me the basics of how to work the machine and got very upset when I took part of it apart as it wasn't sewing right. But when I put it back together and the sewing machine worked better than it did before, Mom let me use the machine as long as she was around. Later I took home ec (cooking and sewing) in grade school all the way thru my senior year in high school. The high school teacher was a little woman and she was very strick with how she wanted you to sew and would hit our hands with a ruler if she saw you doing something wrong. Almost turned me off sewing. I made clothes for all my aunts and hardly ever made anything for myself until graduation.