sewing

I went to the local homeschool convention this weekend and one of the booths had sewing books and patterns for kids. I got to talking with some of the moms in the booth and their experience with teaching kids to sew and decided that just maybe my kids are ready to try.

Sparkle's previous experience with sewing has been only hand sewing at her girls' club. She needed help threading her needle and tying off. When stitching she often got her thread tangled. As a result she got turned off sewing. If Sparkle wanted me to sew something, I'd suggest that she help me, and suddenly she would no longer be interested in whatever it was.

So, I decided to take a new approach today. I decided to let the girls use my sewing machine. I invited Sparkle to sew a pillow for the dolls. She declined. She said that she thought it would be boring. I shifted strategies. I invited Glitter to make a pillow. Glitter jumped at the chance.

I introduced Glitter to running the foot pedal without any thread or fabric. Once she got the hang of moving the needle (and stopping!), I added fabric. Glitter sat on my lap while I helped her guide the fabric as the machine pulled the fabric along. Finally, I added thread and Glitter sewed her first seam. She was so proud! Next, we did a simple pillow. We folded a square of fabric in half and sewed along two sides. I did most of the guiding of the fabric and some of the foot pedal, but Glitter felt like she was doing it. Then we turned the pillow right-side-out and started stuffing it with poly-fill. At this time Sparkle joined us wanting to participate. As I I sewed the pillow closed, Sparkle announced that she changed her mind and wanted to sew a doll pillow too.

Glitter ran off to try out her finished doll pillow and I turned my attention to Sparkle. I started her off the the same process -- no thread or fabric, then just fabric, and finally thread and fabric. Sparkle was too big to fit on my lap, but she was also capable of maintaining a slow, steady stitch so she did all the sewing on her pillow herself. I helped by telling her when to start and stop, and pivoting the fabric at the corner. I also sewed the final seam.

The dolls now have two new fluffy pillows.