Last Friday in South Africa, Crystal and Candace finished their one-week sewing class with nine ladies!
Here they are above, wearing the skirts each one made for herself and holding a sewing kit they were gifted.
This photo was taken the day Crystal and her cousin arrived to South Africa to spend three weeks with Phil and Amrie Geise and their cousin Ezra Morley who is there as well. He is pictured to the right in the photo below.
On the first day, Candace and Crystal taught the women how to use the sewing machine. The teenage son (boy in center with light colored pants) of one of the women helped to translate and was fascinated with the sewing machines. (You can also see him in the photo below to the right.)
Running a sewing machine was a feat in itself. It had not occurred to me that for women who didn't know how to sew, learning to operate the machine with foot pedal would be quite an accomplishment! Plus they had to learn how to thread the machine and thread the bobbin.
Sometimes, Crystal messaged us, it was downright scary trying to help the ladies sew without sewing their finger under the needle! Learning hand/foot coordination was huge that first day. They used scrap fabric or even pieces of paper for the women to learn on.
Each day either Amrie or Crystal shared a devotional before the classes began.
Here is the school building that the after-school sewing class was held inside. You can see that almost all the windows are broken out.
After the first day of class, Candace got all the ladies' measurements and cut out skirt pieces for each of them.
So here they are!
While I merely sew two missing buttons on to a blouse I wore recently!
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