One summer evening after second grade my sister, a neighbor girl and I were bored. When we went in to the house there was my mother sitting at her pink Atlas sewing machine working on some mending. We decided we wanted to learn to sew. Momma stopped what she was doing and cut out three squares of fabric, drew a flower on each one, and gave us each a needle threaded with embroidery thread. Industriously, we sat down and started our project. I remember chatting and laughing together as we sewed. My sister got a knot in her thread and when she got up to take it to Momma for some help, she realized she had sewed her project to the arm of the couch. After we all got a laugh from that, the neighbor girl found her project sewed to her pants and I had sewed mine to the couch pillow in my lap. Poor Momma...I don't think she got very much mending done that night.

Being much older and more experienced, I decided for my third grade Mother's Day project I would make Momma and apron. My teacher must have helped me cut out the lavender fabric and got me started. With twenty other students to supervise , I don't think I got much help after that. We worked on our projects for 15 minutes every day until we finished. I still have the apron... the band and tie was all one piece and there's about six inches of the tie on one side and three feet on the other. There are so many places where I didn't get the raw edge turned all the way under and it looks like I was doing the zigzag by hand on most of it. We get a good laugh whenever I dig it out of the trunk.

My first sewing machine project was when I was in eighth grade. I was determined to do it on my own. I was going to make a pinafore. It was fairly simple to cut out and to read the directions to put it together. However, this was the first time to run the machine by myself. I was afraid I would run over my fingers, so I made the whole thing by turning the wheel by hand!!!!!