Sewing day with Lili

My daughter has been begging me to sew with her for a while now. We got her a machine last summer and she sewed a few practice lines on fabric, but since school has been in we haven't done anything else with her machine. Although, for today's project I let her use my machine. I kept thinking of fun things we could make that were somewhat fast, knowing me I kept adding more detail in my head - but to make it easy I had her pick out 4 layer cake squares. Here she is on her first two squares.

Since she has a perfectionist mother (poor thing) - I made her resew two of the squares because the lines weren't straight enough. I showed her how to pin and she controlled the foot pedal to make sure she stopped right before the pins and then took them out.

Here's the top - simple enough, but we aren't done! We cut out batting and a backing - she did that too. It was so darling how she kept saying "I can do it myself Mom." Then we drew one inch lines using a blue water marker. I held the ruler, she drew the lines.

Now, to the quilting. I told her to just sew along the blue lines. She's really concentrating here - see her tongue sticking out? She may or may not have gotten that from me :)

She quilted this whole thing! I am so proud of her!

I confess, I did the binding - she wanted to do it. But, the perfectionist, almost impatient mother in me had to take over. I promised to teach her that some day. I am proud of the fact that she had fun, and that I didn't get too crazy not being able to take over and quilt it quicker!

We took it outside to get some pictures - I let Lili do that too. I told her to get a close up of the quilting. She did awesome for her first quilting project! When she was showing Clint the finished quilting, she kept point out her mistakes - funny, I think we have another perfectionist on our hands.

Another picture by her - I just couldn't resist posting this with her foot in the picture. I want to remember this little project and the fun we had. I am so happy she is showing an interest in my interests. It's going to be so fun to teach her everything I know.