A budding seamstress…

I have been hesitant to teach Emma to use my sewing machine.  I had visions of a needle through her finger.  Well, I took the easy route and signed her up for a class at Joann Fabric.  What a fun time she had!  The teacher was not happy when she found out Emma had never even sat in front of a sewing machine, or sewed even a straight line.  That left me a little puzzled because this was for kids 8 and up and was the basic class they had.  I mean how much more basic can you get than to create a pillowcase?!

My machine was being very temperamental so she used a loaner which was a lot nicer.  One, it worked.  Two, it had speed control on it.  Anyways, the class was 3 hours and at the end of it she had a very nice pillowcase.  And she had a lot of fun, which was awesome.   She left very excited to sew some more.

Luck would have it that a friend of mine (and the mom of her friend) had a sewing class all set up for Emma and her friend S.  She found a woman who will come to your home and teach you for 5/hr per person.  Great deal!   She worked with the girls on piecing together fabric to make a small quilt and then sewing a second piece on so it was like a pillow case or sleeping bag.  I think both girls left with the idea of stuff it and sewing it shut to make a pillow!

Emma left even more excited to sew more!  We had picked up material to make two more pillowcase earlier in the morning, however she was set on making a sleeping bag for her American Girl doll to go with the pillow.  We came home and I unpacked my box of fabric and she was very happy with the choices she had!

Tonight she pieced together 14 squares to make 2 rows of 7.  I have to cut the solid stripes for her tomorrow so she can sew it together.  I am doing the cutting since we are using the rotary cutter and I also feel it would be easier for her to learn and not get frustrated if everything matches up in the end. 

Hopefully tomorrow I can post pictures of her projects!

Violin advances

I wanted to take a post and write about where Emma is with violin now.  She ended up taking 2.5 months off from practicing while I was back in California with my family, and during the time after my mom passed away.  She had her violin with her, however, her practicing was not on the top of my list of things to worry about.  By the time I was able to get back to helping her, it had been two months and I realized it was more to her advantage to just wait to get back to her lessons than possibly pick up bad habits after not practicing for that long.

She has been back in her lessons (45 mins a week) for 1 month now and they have been fun and interesting.  During this time, we finally made the decision to stop renting her violin and buy her one.  There was a local place here that sells online, and I worked it out with them to come in with Emma, and her teacher, to try out three different violins.  Her teacher is very happy with the one that Emma bought and says it has a lot of potential for great sound as Emma grows with her music.

We really have not been focusing on the music she had been playing before we left for California.  One of my goals was to get Emma into a good practice schedule and she has been doing so wonderful!  She is realizing that by practicing, she is improving that much quicker and sounding that much better.  The rule of thumb is practice each day the same length of time as her lesson.  So we are shooting for 45 mins.  We have broken it into two practices.  For one of them she practices her scales, arpeggios, and her current new song.  The second practice is dedicated to review. 

Her current new song is a fiddle song that she is having a lot of fun learning and playing.  She started this one three weeks ago and is currently working on the third part.

Her teacher has been working on a lot of music theory with Emma.  I am thrilled about this because I am seeing different things showing up with Emma’s music.  Within the past year, she figured out how to play a small “Lovely Ladies”  from Les Miserables by ear.  The other day she was messing around and I had her come out and replay that part I heard.  I then pulled up a song from Glee that was a song from Gypsy (Rose’s Turn) and she was real close.  We had her teacher help with the one note that was off.  I am still not sure whether she came up with that and I made the connection, or she realized as she played it, that it sounded familiar.  Either way, I am impressed!

Her latest adventure is to to compose some music.  She came out the other day with a piece of paper on which she had drawn sheet music and written in her notes in the correct places.  She showed this to her teacher today and played it for her too.  Her teacher then helped her with a few small things and Emma then put it onto sheet music paper I printed out for her.  I really hope she continues to explore with creating music!