Daisy Chain Creations: Sowing While You Sew--Week 8--A Lovely Guest Blogger

Today we have another wonderful guest blogger, Shannon, from Little Kids Grow. You should check out what she does. She is an amazing seamstress, coming up with incredible designs that catch your eye. On top of that, she is an amazing mom of 6! You can tell she is amazing by what she has to say in this post. Her blog is like that too. While I go there for the sewing I always come away feeling a little uplifted and having learned a little bit about life too. So without further ado:

Hi everyone! It's me, Shannon, from LittleKidsGrow.com. I'm so excited to be here with you today to share my first real sewing project with my girls. I taught them to hand sew about a year ago and they just received their first sewing machines this Christmas. We'd done a few practice stitches on their machines and talked about how the machines worked, but this was their first machine sewn garment from start to finish (with a little help from me, of course!). My girls are now 10, and even though they're twins, I'm starting to notice some definite differences in their individual styles. Teaching them how to sew is important to me because it encourages them to express their creativity and individuality while permitting me to gently guide them as they develop their own sense of self.

This was a really great experience for us. While teaching them "how" to sew was the primary focus, secondary benefits began to emerge like patience, diligence, focus and follow through, and not just for them, most definitely for me. It was so hard to not try to "fix" everything, and remember that just as I learned through my mistakes, they need the same opportunity to learn from theirs. On the other side, I could definitely see the differences in their learning styles. One is a slow and methodical learner. She asked lots of questions and worked hard to understand the whole process. My other darling is a lot more like me (Ha!), very fidgety, impatient and would rather file her fingernails than listen to me explain thread tension and why her stitches were skipping (Ahh. Yawn!) But, I get it. I'd probably be bored out of my mind, too.

The beautiful thing though, is they both figured out a way to finish their project, and when it was all over they slipped on their new skirts, pranced and spun around the house like they were princesses at a ball. Then they ran back in, gave me a big hug and said, "Mommy, we did it! We made our first skirt!". Music to my ears. The finished product? A no hem, gathered skirt with a faux drawstring, just in time for Spring!