Sibling Rivalry 2015 Style

Recap of the spring activities for my oldest grand, Miss E.  She is very crafty and makes jewelry, wall art, and is learning to sew.  A few years ago she used both my sewing machine and embroidery machine to make a placemat.  I think she was 10 or 11 at the time.

Here she is last year at the zoo with her older half-sister Miss R and her younger sister, Miss A.

Miss E was the lucky beneficiary of the Babylock sewing machine I won at the Midwest YaYa Sisters event at Nancy's Notions.  She's got a couple of projects in process. 

This weekend, not to be outdone, Miss A asked to come and visit me for a play date.  Understand that when that happens, I usually relinquish all control over what we do and when we do it.  Not on purpose, but she can usually find ways to 'help' me do exactly what she wants. 

This weekend we went into the sewing room, ostensibly to finish up a project I started for the church guild.  I was sorting through a bin of four patches, making piles of similar colors with the intent to put them into kits.  I was also cutting the 2 inch strips required to round out the numbers.  You know how you do that, you sew twos together, then cross cut them into two inch by 3 1/2 inch sections, flip and sew together for a four patch, pressing as you sew.

I chain sew these pieces and parts together, and Miss A usually cuts them apart for me.  A while back I bought a gadget that helps with the cutting, and it goes fairly quickly.  Also it only cuts the threads so there's less of a chance of snipped off corners, or cut fingers.

I think it's called the Cutting Gizmo.

 

Miss E had always done the pressing.  It was a good system, we got whole quilts put together in no time with the help of this gadget.  But Miss E was elsewhere, and Miss A decided she was old enough and tall enough to take over the pressing.

 

I won't deny being nervous about it.  I have an Oliso iron and it's heavy.  She's not quite eight years old, but she's determined and interested.  I demonstrated pressing the little pieces with the seams to the dark side.  She actually got pretty good at it.  We inspected the first batch and there were way more that were really good than were sent back for fixing.  I was just a little nervous about small fingers so near the hot iron when I remember I bought these at Nancy's Notions on Sewing Weekend:

 

The smaller two were the perfect application for her thumb and first finger.  She's very proud of herself for using a grown up tool and doing something before her sister did it (she reminded me that she's two years younger than Miss E was when she started ironing!)

Now if I can teach her to do blouses... 

Sew on!