Introducing Sewing

My kids love to watch me sew. I don't know if it's because they wait to see what I'll accidentally sew together and then make up inventive words to vent my frustration or just because it interests them. So I decided that it was time to introduce them to sewing.

Before you can walk you gotta crawl and before you can use the sewing machine, you gotta know how to hand sew. It's true. I decided the first step to teaching them to sew by hand is to show them how you have to use the needle to go through the materials. So when I was at JoAnn's the other day I picked up a plastic grid and a package of plastic sewing needles. The needles are dull and should not hurt them. I already had yarn at home. If I had to buy yarn this project would have cost less than $5 for two children.

The plastic grid was a little large for small hands so I cut it into four pieces. Next I threaded the needle with a long piece of yarn and tied a large knot in the end.

First I just let both girls play with it for a few minutes to explore. Then I showed them how to push the needle through the grid and then back up again to make straight lines. I can honestly say that neither of them can sew a straight line yet and that they never did proper stitch but they really loved it. Princess Girly Girl worked the longest on her project and kept coming to me to get more yarn.

I had hoped that this would be a project that we could take on road trips with us for them to work on while I drove but they really sew too quickly and require more yarn every 5 minutes but this is a great way to introduce them to the basic stitches of sewing.