Learning to teach

Hope everyone had a wonderful Valentines Day!  I had a great day with my family.  My husband was sweet and did little acts of kindness for me through out the day. Though, I have to say he does this on a regular basis and not just for holidays and special occasions.  I married a wonderful man :)

By the way, I had to mention that I need to complain about not getting any rain more often.  So far we have received two days of rain and today is looking promising for more.  I love it! We need the rain here so bad, everything has been so dry. Also, I planted (for the first time) some bulbs in the fall and they are all starting to come up now.  It's very exciting!

So my daughter, for a while now, has been asking me to let her sew something. For whatever reason I would tell her "yes, but that we would do it later".  I kept putting her off.  Until I realized I was being completely ridiculous! Why would I keep putting her off?  I have always thought how fun it would be to have my kids old enough that I could do little projects with them or teach them to sew.  Granted I do not feel the most qualified for this job.  I LOVE to learn new things and make things for my kids or home but I still feel like I'm learning and do not have all the answers or correct techniques. 

So finally one day I told her, "yes and lets do it right now"! I asked her what it was she wanted to make.  She said a bag to put her Polly pocket clothes in. Then I had her go through my fabric and pick out what she wanted for the bag. And we started sewing. I tried to explain and talk her through each step.  But I quickly discovered a problem!

Okay okay I've known it's been a problem for a long time but I've been in denial. 

 I can not just let her go and do it all by herself!  I'm so controlling of everything! It's terrible.  I'm constantly telling myself that it's ridiculous to be this way.  Honestly, I really don't care if she has each stitch straight and perfect.  That this is how she is going to learn by trial and error.  Yet every time I could see that her stitch was veering off in no mans land I had to stick my hand in and guide her back.  

Grrr it's annoying not only to me but I'm sure to her too.  Does anyone else have this problem? Any suggestions?

Anyways,  That is my goal this year to take a chill pill and allow my kids to experiment and learn by doing and messing up and having to start over.  Or by falling in love with there finished project (perfect or not) because they did it all by themselves. 

With all that said I do think she had fun sewing her bag and I had fun doing it with her.  I think I just need to do things like this with her more then I will learn to stand back and wait for her to come to me with questions.

I can't believe how big my sweet girl is getting! 

Happy sewing!

P.s I do have a project to share so I will have that up tomorrow.