Get Crafty With Kids
WeAllSew welcomes Helen Spencer from Hello Sewing with a fun post about sewing with kids! Helen has some great suggestions for getting kids interested in sewing, and shows how you might use a simple bookmark as a first sewing project. Just cut the materials to size and let your kid experiment with hand stitches!
Every parent and child need at least a couple of treasured memories together. The day you taught your kid how to
ride a bicycle, that time when he fell off a swing in the park and cut his head so you spent an entire day hiding
the scar after the doc patched it up because you would have been murdered if your beautiful wife found out about
it, the first time you cooked together. Lovely moments, wonderful times.
But if you find an activity you’ll do together for a prolonged period of time, you’ll have a ton more precious
memories like those behind you. And since you’ll be spending some time while doing so, why not make that activity a
craft or skill developing type? Have fun, make life long memories and provide your child with a handy and helpful
ability that will certainly be useful to them at some point in their lives.
How can you do that, you ask? By sewing stuff together!
The Benefits
Sewing has a lot of benefits and it’s quite an amazing craft because of that. Not only does it provide you to be
more self-dependent by patching up, upgrading, or even creating entire wardrobe pieces, plush toys, various
accessories and so much more all by yourself, it also brings a couple more positive things to the table.
It improves your child’s hand to eye coordination and overall hand and finger dexterity. This means steady hands,
precise fine movements, and less clumsiness. Which basically prepares them for professions ranging from surgeon to
architect.
Just like any other skill, this one improves a person’s self-confidence considerably. The more you can do, the less
afraid of failure you get, and more often than not, that alone is sufficient to achieve something.
Sewing, especially by hand, is a great exercise for building up patience and perseverance. Fine, detailed work like
embroidery or embellishment takes a lot of concentration and sometimes even a bit of anger management. And getting
used to that with sewing projects will definitely help you when such characteristics become needed in real life
situations.
And last but not least, sewing offers you a chance to really broaden your social life. Mingling with people who
like the same thing as you do can be a lot of fun and a pretty effective way to gain some new friends. Just look at
pubs and bars, they exploit that trick most effectively.
Now that we’ve gone through the benefits,let’s see how to put this plan of teaching your kids how to sew into
action with these three easy steps.
The Spark
Before you start teaching your kid how to sew, you must first awake their interest in that craft. You can do this
by showing them the supplies, the finished projects as well as mid work ones. Show them what can be made with this
skill.
Another good method is to take your little one to the local craft store and sign them up for a sewing class.
They’ll learn the most basic sewing techniques and have fun while doing so. After they’ve improved enough, they may
move on to more difficult tasks that are done with a sewing machine.
The Flame
Now that they love the trade, you should nourish that feeling and let them continue practicing their hobby at home
as well. Of course, since they’re still beginners, make sure you stay by their side at all times, just in case.
Come up with ideas for their projects together and try to start with something simple and then gradually up the
difficulty so that they improve bit by bit with each new task.
Let It Burn
After a while, if you see that your kid has gotten really good at sewing and is still enjoying it as much as he or
she did at the beginning, you might want to consider buying them their own sewing machine. Nothing too fancy, the
basic model will do.
Go on now, get crafty!
If you’d like to read more about teaching kids to sew, check out these other articles at WeAllSew:
