Last Friday I met with my first sewing student, Cindy.  She has a new sewing machine to uncover and explore.  What?  It's a contemporary, silver, and almost all-metal Singer?  I've  heard of them but never saw one.  Cindy wants a machine that is very durable and equipped to handle sewing projects such as curtains, bed skirts, quilts, furniture restoration, etc. so she is on the right track.  First, I showed Cindy how to put the machine together and to thread the machine.  She is an excellent learner so far, so we just delved into a first project; a bed skirt.  We took another bed skirt that fit her queen-sized bed to use as a "pattern" for the new bed skirt (ruffle attached to sheet).  Our math skills came into play as we measured and doubled for the amount of material we needed; measure three sides of the bed and then doubled the number to find out how much fabric we needed to form the ruffle along three sides of the bed. We also planned extra inches for overlapped edges on two of the corners.  I advised Cindy to wash, dry, and iron her fabric before cutting and stitching anything.  This way the dust ruffle won't shrink when it's washed again and the fabric will be softer to work with.  We want it to be soft so that the gathers turn out as ruffles not pleats.  After an hour and a  half, we headed out the door to get sandwiches at a local restaurant.  It was a great learning time on Friday!