My mom bought Ana Lia a sewing machine for her seventh birthday. Ana Lia had been asking for one for a while, but I was the one who hadn’t been ready to get her one. My mom had owned a business designing and making custom wedding dresses for most of my childhood. I did a lot of the handwork for her including blind stitching the zippers in and some of the bead work, but sewing machines had always intimidated me. In fact, when we opened her sewing machine and found out the bobbin came already wound, I was so relieved because I wasn’t sure I could remember how to do that part. Ana Lia wanted to get started immediately, and I was afraid that bobbin would be the end of the road.
A few friends gave her spending money for her birthday, so we went and bought a dress pattern, some fabric, and a set of pre-cut squares. We got the squares because I knew that she would want to use the sewing machine first without having to wait for us to cut the pattern and the fabric out. We got home, set up the machine, and started sewing the squares together. I showed her how to thread the needle and use the presser foot, then I let her start working on her own. One of the most important lessons I learned from unschooling was to take a step back. We do a great disservice to our children when we step in to correct all their mistakes before they have a chance to correct themselves. I watched her stitch two of the squares together and then went to my desk to do my own work.
I was only a few feet away so I could hear any requests for help or if the machine made funny noises, but I couldn’t see what she was doing. This is a solution I discovered when the children were very young. If I could see what they were doing, I wanted to correct it. When they wanted to fill the muffin tins, I simply walked away so that I was not micromanaging every spoonful of batter. When Ana Lia demonstrated she had learned to be safe around the stove and wanted to scramble her own eggs and cook her own pancakes, I turned around so that I couldn’t see how she did it. In the beginning, this certainly led to more messes and some undercooked pancakes. However, in the long term it built her confidence so that she can make an entire breakfast without my interference. She can make banana muffins, asking for only a few clarifying instructions along the way. It avoids all the frustration on both our parts if I’m not trying to fix everything as she does it. I took this lesson into our new sewing adventure.
By stepping away and letting her work on those squares by herself, I showed her that I had confidence in her ability to do it on her own and to seek assistance when she needed it. The thread came out multiple times, so she got lots of practice threading the machine in the beginning. Once she learned to sew three sides together, we stuffed one of them with cotton balls to make the mini pillows she had been previously making by hand. She asked me what would happen if she sewed three pieces of fabric together instead of two. I provided only a questioning look, so she went to try it in order to find out. She did four pieces next. It was a time of learning and exploration with hands off from me. At the end of the day, she asked if we could start making her dress.
We started with cutting out the pattern. This was one of the times that I didn’t step away because I knew how fragile the pattern was. When she started cutting it, the pattern ripped, and she saw my very visible reaction, after which she didn’t want to cut the pattern out anymore. It was a direct reminder how much she still depended on me to communicate my confidence in her. After that misstep, I was even more cautious in corrective responses. I cut out the pattern, and then showed her how to pin to the folded fabric and how to cut the notches into the fabric so that we would be able to put it together like a puzzle once we had it cut out. She took over and did the rest of the cutting by herself.
Next, we practiced pinning the pieces together, and this dress was such a great place to start because it had some long seams down the side so that she could practice simply feeding the fabric through the machine. We had done a few of them, and I again left her to her work. At one point, I noticed the machine sounded funny so I went to check on her. The stitches also looked very funny. A little investigation revealed that she had sewn one of the long seams with the presser foot up. The stitches looked like they were all going to fall out, so I explained that we would have to take the seam out and do it again. Her upbeat reaction surprised me, and she happily removed all the stitches and redid the seam.
She was also getting frustrated at one point because the thread kept getting knotted up. As I watched her thread it again, I saw that she was threading the needle from the back. A quick demonstration fixed that problem too. The most encouraging part was watching her persevere over these obstacles. It reinforced the idea that my children don’t need me to hold their hands through the entire creative process. They only need some initial instructions and then my availability to help when required. Allowing them to make mistakes on their own builds confidence for the next time around.
She slowly but surely got all her pieces together, seam by seam. It was so exciting as she got closer and closer, then she shouted with joy when she finished the last stitches. She brought it to me to tie the shoulders on her so that she could wear it, and she wore it around the house for the next three days. The seams were all sorts of distances from the edge of the fabric. They veered off in wonky directions every few inches. But she had made a dress, mostly by herself with me lending assistance when helpful. The next time around, she will need even less, and the stitches will be a little straighter. After that, she may not need anything from me, and she can create to her heart’s content.
I am grateful for the lessons both from unschooling and from Charlotte Mason. Both philosophies helped me get to this point. Charlotte Mason’s emphasis on handicrafts gave me the motivation to restart lessons like quilting, crochet, and sewing. Unschooling taught me that these things did not need to be perfect in order to be enjoyed. Combining these lessons allowed Ana Lia and I the opportunity to tackle this project and come out successful on the other side without any arguments or power struggles. It was an absolute joy to work alongside her.