I do remember hand sewing some little project in Girl Scouts when I was about seven. My mother sewed beautiful clothes for some wealthy ladies in our town and I watched her quite a lot. She would explain to me "what she was doing and why" but I rarely got to use her sewing machine....a Singer 66-16....because she was always using it. (Still have it today, btw.) Then I made a blouse in 8th grade Home-Ec under the watchful eagle eye of Miss Jones who seemed to me to be very old at the time. All the mothers of us girls called her an "old maid". A side note here....Miss Jones was very frugal and upon her death she left quite a large fortune to a local university. In Home Ec class we were assigned an "outside" project to complete and turn in for a grade. One of the projects was a puff quilt made from wool salesman's samples stuffed with nylon stockings. This is where my love for quilts began. I began to stay up late at night to use mother's sewing machine teaching myself as I sewed. This continued until I married and was able to purchase my own sewing machine, a Singer 603 Touch and Sew, which I still use alot. I paid $20 a month on this machine until it was paid. That was 50 years ago.