The Princess and the Babylock

Last week I blogged a little bit about Miss E and the Babylock sewing machine I won at Nancy's Notions in May.  Here's an update of her first project.

First she learned how to thread bobbins, that was fun.  There were only four of them in the machine packet, and that's enough for now, but we put that on our shopping list.

 

We're sewing at my kitchen table.  The light in great in there, and she has her notebook and her accessories box, and of course will be well hydrated. 

 

She's stitching together a bunch of five inch squares that I had in my stash management storage.  I told her to take anything she wanted.  She took browns, blacks, grays and a few miscellaneous squares like orange/black check and some plaids.  I should have taken a photo of her laying them out, that ended up being quite the process.  I don't think "random" is in her wheelhouse.  She is a planner and gets a few OCD tendencies from Gramps down through Mom!

 

Anyway, once she was satisfied with the layout, she sewed and pressed and sewed and pressed, and this is the resulting small quilt top:

Adding a narrow border in, what else, black!

Pinning in the last border strip. 

This is the inner border. She has a wider brown border left to attach.

This turned out pretty nicely as a first 'on my own' project.  Since Miss E already knows how to operate a sewing machine, most of what I did was just coaching on the process.  Once she understood what she needed to do, she was off and running, and only came to me if she had a question. 

One border seam didn't catch for a couple of inches, so she learned how to unsew, which taught the value of putting in more pins.

The experience was altogether very pleasant for everyone.  In the process of the lessons, we thought of things we added to our shopping list: 

• 1/4 inch seam foot -- not in the basic kit
• magnetic pin catcher
• thread nippers

...and she already shopped the pattern section of our local Joann's for some likely next projects.

The pattern on the left, the sleeveless duster is Miss E's preferred next project.

There will be some shopping in my stash for an appropriate fabric.  She's requested a black and white print or floral.  I'm sure I have something suitable, and if not, we'll go shopping!

Rita, if you're reading this, thanks again!

Sew on...