My Mom was a nurse and worked during the day in surgery. She also sewed all my clothes. One day when I was 8 and she was at work I hand sewed a skirt for my little sister. It was brown fabric and my seams were on the outside. She wouldn't let my sister wear it and that disappointed me but she did decide to teach me how to sew on her machine. When I was 10 I had a pair of shorts that had a broken zipper. I took it out and remembered how it should go back in. I took the old zipper downtown (we lived in a small town) to the dime store and bought another zipper the same size and put it in. When my mother came home from work she was amazed and said fly front zippers are the hardest to replace and she couldn't believe I figured it out. Then she gave me 2 pairs of my Dad's dress pants to replace the zippers and my Mom and Dad said they were perfect. Praise and encouragement like that really inspired me to sew all my own clothes all through college and after. No one in my family made quilts and I'm new to it and loving it.