I’m pretty sure I’m not the one who put puppy stickers on my acrylic ruler…
This past Saturday morning — which just happened to be National Quilting Day — I was watching Fons & Porter’s “Love of Quilting” on our local PBS station, as I try to do every week when new episodes air. Because it airs at 8:00 a.m., however, and because I have small children who seem to want food or attention (or both) from mommy first thing on Saturday to get the weekend started, I’m usually not able to pay attention to it as closely as I’d like.
So I was a little surprised when, completely unsolicited, my kindergartener said she wanted to do some sewing, and my 3-going-on-13-year-old agreed.
My view of my sewing machine when my 3-year-old “helped” me with my machine quilting.
A few months ago we did an episode of Quilters Newsletter TV: The Quilters’ Community in which I talked about some easy quilting projects I did with my daughters (click here for the episode on QNNtv.com); I also blogged about them (click here to read my blog post).
Truth be told, we haven’t done a whole lot of sewing together recently. Sure, I let my younger daughter sit on my lap when I’m at my sewing machine and she “helps” by placing her fingers on the fabric to guide it. But I haven’t done hand stitching with them since the first time I did it with my older daughter because, well… To be honest, it’s because my younger daughter is no longer taking a regular nap, and I haven’t felt like wrangling two small sets of hands simultaneously. And besides, when I’m downstairs in the guest/sewing room, I want to be working on my own projects. Yep, I’m selfish that way.
But they were both pretty insistent they wanted to sew, so I took them up on it.
Getting started was a challenge, as my older daughter was having trouble deciding exactly what she wanted to do and how to describe it. When she said she wanted to draw on some fabric with my marking pencils (which she’s already worn down to nubs by scribbling on paper), I decided to press scraps of white fabric to freezer paper for stability and let both of them color with crayons. My older daughter wrote, “I ❤ you mom dad,” in keeping with the theme of her current series of notes left around the house, similar to the one shown. Meanwhile, my younger daughter took a Jackson Pollack-approach to her scrap. I’m going to heat-set both of them and use them in the pieced backing for the queen bed quilt that is currently a UFO but will be a WIP before long (she says optimistically).
After some breakfast, my older daughter remembered that what she really wanted was to sew with a needle and thread as she’d done before. I took a deep breath, pulled out some scraps, two small embroidery hoops and my sashiko needles, and then I let them pick some thread. My older daughter ended up choosing a pretty, light orange rayon thread, which maybe wasn’t the best match for a big-eye sashiko needle. The needle came unthreaded a number of times, but once she got the hang of holding it at the eye, she got into a rhythm and worked by herself while I focused on her sister. When I checked on her progress, I was mighty impressed by how diligently she stitched and how (relatively) even her stitches were.
The kindergartener’s hand stitching
Such a difference from the large, crisscrossing stitches she did last year!
And in her first foray, the 3-year-old did a good job, too. She’s always caught on quickly to how things work, saying, “I do it mySELF!” And by and large, she’s right — she can do it herself, as you can see below. (I let her choose which color size 8 perle cotton thread she preferred, but limited her choices to my thicker threads.)
The 3-year-old’s first hand stitching efforts
So I guess you could say National Quilting Day was a successful one in our house. It will be interesting to see if and how their interest in sewing develops over the years. They’re still both very young, although my older daughter is acquiring new skills at an exponential rate these days, so she may be ready for some real projects soon. I noticed that longarmer extraordinaire Angela Walters and her daughter Chloe recently appeared on Jodie Davis’ “Quilt It!” show to talk about Get Quilting with Angela and Chloe, their upcoming book of quilting projects for 8- to 13-year-olds (click here for the full episode on QNNtv.com). I haven’t watched it yet but I can’t wait to do so. After all, my daughters will be 8 before I know it.
If you’re not a kid anymore and are looking for some fun hand-stitching tools and projects, check out the links below.
As always, to find out about Quilters Newsletter’s giveaways, quilting news, tips, techniques and more, visit us on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest, Instagram, YouTube, QNNtv.com and our website. Plus, see Web Seminars on QuiltAndSewShop.com and classes, courses and workshops on Craft Daily.com and CraftOnlineUniversity.com.
