Service Rendered, 3 Years Later

I have been Ashlea White's visiting teacher for over 3 years now. I remember visiting her one day when Grace was a few months old. Ashlea had asked me if I would teach her how to sew and of course I said yes. It was summer and I had a lot of time on my hands. Well Grace is now 3 and guess what????? I finally went over and taught Ashlea some basic sewing techniques.
Before I left my house a thought ran through my mind about bringing some of my sewing necessities: scissors, pins, seam rippers, you get the idea. My next thought was, no, she'll have those things if we are planning to sew.
I showed up at her house around 1:30. I couldn't wait to see the material and pattern that she picked out. She began to show me what she had bought at JoAnns. There wasn't a pattern or material. It was an adult sun dress piece that we would somehow turn into a child's dress. I thought, "She must think I sew all the time." I've never made anything from scratch in my life. Ashlea was giving me the opportunity to stretch myself.
It took us a while to get the machine threaded. It was different from my 27 year old machine. That's right, my machine is older than Ashlea. We were ready to start. This is when the sewing adventure became quite interesting. Ashlea handed me her every day scissors. Boy, did they need a sharpening job. Then she handed me a pair of scissors that had a blade no longer than 2 inches. I knew I should have brought my scissors along. We just laughed. When we were ready to pin the fabric together I asked her for the pins. Ashlea didn't have pins, but she scrounged around and found about 10 needles. We laughed some more. I don't think I have ever used needles to pin fabric together, but it worked.
When the first mistake was made I asked Ashlea if she had a seam ripper. She said, "A what?" So, as you can tell she didn't have one and we used a needle instead. Needles saved the day for us. It wasn't until later when we were sewing a small area and I needed the bottom of the machine to come off. I was pulling this, pushing that and nothing was coming off. Then I pulled on something and a compartment opened up and we discovered a bag full of goodies. Guess what we found in the bag. A seam ripper! That came in handy until Grace got a hold of it and broke it. So, it was back to the needle again.
Ashlea had many good ideas as the dress was being created. I think we must have changed our ideas about how the dress should look 5 or more times. I was proud of her creative ideas and how we changed things around. She learned a lot, laughed a lot and did some great sewing on that dress. Grace was a trooper too. I think she had to try that dress on about 15 times. And trying to keep a 3 year old still was an even bigger challenge. The dress was finally finished at 10:00. Since Grace was still up we had her put it on one last time. It was sweet how she just twirled around like a princess in her dress.
Thanks for allowing me the opportunity to serve you and your family. I feel bad that it took so long. Let's do it again sometime.