Originally Posted by
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.
For teaching sewing, I like a hand crank with a finger guard - The finger guard isn't fool proof but it goes a long ways for peace of mind. It was very hard for them to hand crank and move material at the same time. Then I used 3X5 cards. They can go over the lines or between the lines. You can draw circles on them - actually large half circles work. I drew dot to dots on the card so they can sew to the dot and stop on the dots then turn and sew on. I put their names on the cards so they could take them home or compare how well they did the next time. It isn't as intimidating as a large piece of fabric and it isn't as messy for me to clean up like a thread clogged machine. When they get to the thread they have to know not to go backwards. Or just skip to a motorized machine so they don't go backwards. I also make them stop with the needle up all the way unless they are making turns.