My mom has some mad sewing skills. She makes amazing quilts. Most of the rooms in my house reflect her work. When I was in high school, she could whip up a dress for a school dance or create dance costumes for half the troupe, all without breaking a sweat.

She failed in only one area: passing her skills to her daughter. Admittedly, I was a horrible student.

Mom has had much better luck passing her passion along to her granddaughter. They sew together during every visit. But those visits only happen a few times each year. Ever since my daughter received her very own sewing machine for Christmas, I’ve been promising that she and I would take a lesson together at the studio around the corner.

You can see that I’m a terrible mother as well as a terrible daughter… it’s taken me six months to fulfill that promise. But on Wednesday evening, we finally went to a class together. We sewed a lovely market bag each and we had a fabulous time. Plus, I thought I showed inordinate patience with all the pinpricking and pressing involved in this looooong sewing process. Any cursing I did was barely audible.

Then, in the last half-hour of our class, the instructor leaned over and whispered to my daughter: “I’ll be your sewing instructor from now on. Next time, just tell your mom to drop you off.”

And thus ended my sewing career.