When my grandniece wanted to learn to sew she and mom's fiance would just sew pieces of scraps together. He would thread the needle for her. Then she insisted on threading. She's pretty good at that. I gave her some scrap material that had a pattern on it. Some of the patterns were plaids, stripes and couple paisleys. The solid scraps I put a line to be sewn on to square up the scrap and she was to do a 1/4", 1/2" and 5/8" seams. Hadn't seen her for about a month then I stopped over at their house and they including mom's fiance showed their progress. It was really good what they did with the samples. They ended up sewing all the pieces together. Had to laugh and then realized it looked like the beginnings of a crazy quilt. They decided they would make a pillow out of it and give it to my sister for Christmas. Showed them how to sew a button on and they are just all over the place with a needle and thread.