My grand daughter was 12 when I taught her the basics of quilt making. Actually, she'd never even started up a sewing machine prior to this experience (My daughter claims that "sewing skipped a generation" in our family ......lol). Anyways, I had my grand daughter make a rag quilt for her first project. That gave her experience in using acrylic rulers, rotary cutting, straight line sewing, etc. without the frustration of accurate seam matching. Just a suggestion