One weekend a few months back I had to make a quick stop at my parents house to drop off something.  I ended up staying for lunch and started chatting with my dad and somehow we got on the subject of sewing.  My mom still had the Janome sewing machine I got for her birthday (or Mother’s day…can’t remember) years ago.  She barely used it and was more accustomed to her antique singer machine that no longer worked, which was why I bought her a new one.  I guess she was a little intimidated by the machine I got her and when she lost the manual to it, well that was the end of that and it just got tucked away in her closet for years.  During my visit my dad talked about how he wanted to sew curtains for the bedroom. I reminded him about the Janome that mom never uses. He said the manual was lost, I said “no problem, I’ll show you”.  He sounded like a kid…”really?” I said “yeah, I’ll teach you how to thread it and everything”.  His excitement was child-like and I loved it!

So out came the long retired, hardly used, still in mint condition Janome.  I very gently and patiently demonstrated the steps on how to thread. My dad is 86 and gets very impatient and very easily frustrated with anyone and everyone so I had to really take a deep breath…lol…and say a prayer before I started showing him what to do.  My mom, bless her heart was sitting close by and knew the basics of sewing but let me give the lesson instead.  “Okay dad, you place your spool of thread on the spool pin, then pull the thread through the back of the hook then down through the thread guide then back up through the take-up lever then back down behind the hook in front of the needle then through the  needle itself….now you try”. Oh my word…bless his heart, after a few tries he finally got it and I regret that I didn’t catch his child-like gleeful excitement on video.  I did take a video of him repeating the steps again and then one of my mom who knew what she was doing but clearly tuning my dad out as he was trying to tell her how to do it…lol!

Here’s a few pictures and a couple of videos of our afternoon together.  Sorry the videos are mostly in Spanish.

My dad is watching my mom closely to make sure she doesn’t screw up…lol!