Janis

Nanna, Good luck with teaching your GD how to sew. My 6yr old GD puts the foot petal of my FW on the table to sew. She uses her right hand to work the foot petal and the left to guide the material. I got the needle/finger guard from sew-classic. The 4 yr old twins also love to make my machine go! They put their hands on the foot petal and I guide the material through the machine. Last time they were heavy on the foot petal and the machine ran FAST!!! Good thing I was just doing straight sewing and using no pins. When I do use pins with the 6 yr old, I put them in from the opposite side so they are pulled out from the left rather than the right of the needle. They don't get in the way of a guide for the width of the seam allowance. They also stay in better as they are grabbing more fabric. I use the quilting pins with the plastic heads. I threw all of my tiny regular straight pins away a long time ago. Also handy with the little ones is a telescoping magnet for picking up pins. They love playing with it too.

Isn't it a lot of fun getting an old vintage machine working again!!??!! Even if it belongs to others, it really feels like an accomplishment to getting them to work and be useful again.