Friday, February 20, 2015

Sewing with my Gals: Stuffies

My daughters had two days off of school this week, so we took one morning and made stuffies with scrap fabric. 

We got the idea from the book Sewing School (http://sewingschool.blogspot.com), which I highly recommend for teaching kids to sew. Everything is kid-centered, doesn't focus on appearance, and it even tells you what size needle and what type of thread to buy. This was my 5-year-old's first time actually sewing, and I thought she did a great job!



Next time I'll probably have them draw their own animals, but this time, since the instructions call for tracing from paper to fabric anyway, I let them pick coloring pages online, which I enlarged for them and they traced. They also did the coloring, cutting, sewing, and stuffing with only a little guidance. 



I learned cross-stitch as a kid but never the more practical sewing skills. I had to take a machine sewing beginner's class at the local community college with a friend a few years ago in order to learn even the most basic things. 

I'm hoping that giving the girls creative license in this arena will foster a long-term interest in developing sewing skills. It's also the perfect outlet for my crafty girls.