There is something magical and sweet about a child handing you something they have made all by themselves.  It might be the look on their faces when they offer it to you, or the joy in their voices as they crow over their success, or the delight they share openly when you compliment their work.  Children don’t seem to protect themselves the way adults do; they never apologize for flaws or play down their accomplishments; and they give freely and with no motive other than pleasure in the giving.  I love that, and wish that I had more of those qualities for myself.  So a simple sewing project that’s designed to lead to a gift for someone else, well, that’s pretty close to perfection.

Sharp Needles and Sharp Eyes

There is a lot about handwork that requires thought and time: planning the design, executing the stitches, imagining the look of the finished project.  There is also a lot that requires thoughtfulness: planning who will receive the objet once it’s done, planning the exact moment and manner of the gifting, planning what to say when you hand them the thing you’ve made with them in your mind the whole time.  I want my children to learn to be thoughtful in all those ways, about what they make–are my stitches even? do I have room for this design? did I make a knot in my floss before I began?–and about where they put what they make–who will get this?  is it the right gift for that person?  what can I do to make this gift an experience they will treasure?

A simple hand embroidery project can give all those opportunities to our children, and framing their work at the end can take it up a whole other notch.  Asking small children to handle sharp needles can be a little nerve-wracking.  They could get hurt!  They could hurt you!  They could ruin the finish on the table!  Most kids are pretty willing to try new things, and they’ll let you know if it’s too much for them.  Our children were sharp-eyed and excited at the idea of doing Real Sewing with mommy, and it led to a quiet, enjoyable, focused evening for us together.

When I first began embroidering, I thought I’d need to go out and get gobs of floss and needles.  Not only did I find that embroidery floss is absurdly inexpensive–around 35 cents a skein–but that I had inherited boxes of it from Sandra (all numbered by color, naturally).  We brought out a single box to use with the children, but you can easily purchase a multi-pack of two dozen colors for under $5.  I see them frequently at Michael’s in a variety of color combinations.

For needles, I opted to give both my children a blunt-tipped craft needle (the lower one in the image).  This comforted me in terms of their ability to gouge out their own (or each others) eyes, which didn’t happen and probably wouldn’t have, but one can never be too careful.  I was more concerned for my littlest one, who is just over two, since he doesn’t have much experience with needles.  Our four-year-old has done some hand work in her Montessori program, so I was less worried about her. The fifteen-year-old is on her own.  One must prioritize one’s worrying.

Needles were threaded with a double-thickness of floss, tied in a knot at the end, to keep them secure.  Few things frustrate a child while sewing as much as pulling on that needle and watching the tail of the floss go flapping off into the distance, no longer anchored.  Doubling makes the floss substantially thicker, but the blunt needles are also thicker, and the doubled floss fills in that hole better.

All our stitching was done on white Kona cotton, using a 4″ wooden embroidery hoop.  I like a larger hoop myself, but for little hands, smaller is better.  I think having a smaller hoop also limited the sheer area of embroiderability, which is good for learners: giving them a limited palette prevents them from feeling overwhelmed at the outset.

To start with, we worked very free-form, using the needle to push through any old place on the hoop, moving from one part of the fabric to another, just getting the gist of going from front-to-back as we sewed.  Our boy, especially, spent a lot of time focusing on how the needle goes through at the front and where it will come out at the back, like an infant who has just discovered that when you put the ball under the bowl, it’s still there.  He was fascinated by the way the needle drew the floss through the fabric, but he couldn’t really see it on the other side, a whole step up from the plastic canvas, where all the work was really in front of him the whole time.

Our four-year-old wanted to work with something more structured pretty soon, though, and moved on to using a pen to draw shapes to follow on the fabric.  These were pretty free-form, and of course Little Brother wanted to do the same thing.  So sometimes, it was kind of a mess:

I encouraged her to start working on geometric shapes, so that not only is she working out how to handle the needle without getting stuck and how to follow a line she’s drawn, but she can see that her stitches will mirror whatever is beneath them.

She loved the repetition of the stitches, the way she could draw the floss up through the fabric, and having the power and control to really guide the needle.  It was kind of surprising to see–I knew she would be focused and get a little lost in it (as I do), but I didn’t expect her fingers to feel so commanding to her, or for her to express verbally how much of a sense of creation this task gave her.

As she went along, we talked about gifts and giving, and who might like to have a piece of her sewing for their very own.  I want to communicate to my children not only that the things they make are valuable and worthy of giving, but that we can make for someone else as an act of thoughfulness and kindness and love, that using our hands, we can offer them a feeling and create a moment for them that will last long after the giving itself is done.  I don’t want them to grow up thinking that the love is IN the gift, that the reason we give things to others is because we’re obligated to do so; I want them to really internalize the idea that BY giving we communicate something from our hearts, and that we can build relationships through the caring act of making something for another human being.

We began embellishing the embroidery, adding buttons and seeing how those interacted with the floss.  Now, our two-year-old had full-on lost interest at this point and had gone to play trains with his Daddy.  I’m totally down with that.  Again, my purpose is to make this a playground, not a prison, and I have a vested interest in asking my children to craft only when they’re feeling it.  That way, when there is a need to craft–when a gift-giving occasion arises, for example–creating something is an act of joy, which translates itself into the gift.  So by this point, it was just me and Miss M at the table, buttons and floss flying.

We talked about giving a gift to Daddy, and how he would like to see her work.  She knows she’s valued, she knows her work is worth sharing, but I wanted to communicate that to her AND the rest of our family by framing a piece and offering it as a gift:

Because it isn’t just about her putting thought into the making of it all.  And it isn’t really just about her being thoughtful toward others in giving what she’s made.  It’s about us all thinking, about me being thought-full, about me acknowledging that our words and actions today will impact her for a long time to come, and that something small–like framing her embroidery with all its imperfections–can really have meaning for her.

I should point out that I am very much like the dad in A River Runs Through It on this one, though: he made them write and re-write and re-re-write their essays over and over–and when it was done and perfected, he threw it in the trash and sent them out to play.  I am all for empowering our kids to create by framing a piece of work to put on the wall, but at the same time, when that piece has had its say, it comes down to be replaced by another.  Because if we are truly thoughtful, and truly thinking, we recognize that it’s all transient, there is no perfect, each piece is unique and beautiful and worthy of treasuring but that in the end, it will be replaced.  And SHOULD be.  Because it’s the memories we make while we’re making that are worth saving, and those last longer than fabric and thread.  I don’t want to accidentally teach my children to hang on to every scrap of ribbon and every shred of art with the false idea that it matters in and of itself.  I hope that they will see that we applaud it as a reflection of who they were at a moment in time, and who they are becoming, and that nothing in our home matters as much as they do.  Make the best you can make when you make it, but remember that in the end, it’s just stuff, and stuff is never as important as people.

Something to think about.

Sometimes, when children are introduced to new ideas, they struggle with getting their tiny hands around tasks suited to a bigger world.  For them, and for us, it can be tough to stay tuned in when a job feels too big or too tough, and it leads to lack of attention and–gasp!–quitting.  I want my kids to learn to press on through, to recognize that even though the going can get tough, that if we push ourselves, if we challenge ourselves, if we have faith that at the other end of the experience something wonderful is waiting, that we can discover amazing worlds, right in our own hands.

And that last part–the faith in discovery–is a big part of the thought process behind today’s lesson.  I want my kids to trust me, I want them to believe that if Mommy introduces them to a new craft or toy or book or game that it’s because I know they can do it.  I believe in them, I see their ability, and I trust that they can succeed.  HUGE ideas for little people, but central to growing up secure and healthy.  And the seeds for such a giant idea can be sown with something as small as an after-dinner activity.

Plastic Needles and Plastic Canvas

After dinner is hardly the place I would ordinarily do a craft project.  I’m much more likely to plan it for, say, after breakfast, when the light is bright and our bodies are rested and when we’re all full from breakfast and in that golden hour of no-one-screaming.  It lasts from around 9:30 to 11ish at our house each day, that perfect period of contentment when we all universally like one another, and no one is poopy or grumpy or cranky or anxious or tired or hungry or irritated.  It’s my favorite time of day.  But this week, we took a few minutes after supper one night to do our craft, and it was a real risk.  I share this because some of what I learned is the direct result of WHEN we did this lesson, and it wasn’t at all what I expected.

Plastic canvas is a perennial favorite of crafters.  There’s something very Free To Be You And Me about it: it makes us think of tissue box covers and camp.  But for teaching kids to sew, it have some distinct advantages, despite its 1970s afterglow: the holes are precut and regularly spaced, making it easier for tiny fingers to work out the rhythm of stitching; the needles aren’t terribly sharp, and help littler ones avoid any unseemly incidents; the yarn is thick enough that any mistakes or changes in stitch technique are visible right away, making it simple to point out distinctions and build on the lessons of the lacing cards; and the length and complexity of the project is fairly whimsical in nature and can be as persnickety as you’d like (or not), so it suits all ages and inclinations.

I wanted this next lesson to really be about how to hold the needle, where to put the needle, and how moving the needle in new directions changed the way the project turned out.  Again, like the last two lessons, these all seem like super simple concepts, but for children–who are tabluae rasa and don’t have any clear conception of what sewing is, no expectations for this experience–spelling it all out and making it explicit is the best way to lay a foundation that will let you have much more complicated lessons later.

So for the two younger kids, we worked with very few expectations.  Under the warm glow of the overhead lamp in the dining room, after the dishes had been cleared away, we pulled out skeins of yarn in bright solid colors.  Laid out in a row, I produced the plastic canvas and needles.  Plastic canvas is just what it sounds like: plastic sheeting that has been molded into a grid, with the openings appearing at regular intervals to allow a needle and thread or yarn to be passed through it.  The canvas sheets can be cut into shapes, like squares and rectangles, that are then put together (and they also come in little circles!).  I got mine here, in the size 5 and 7.  The smaller number is a larger opening (5 openings per inch in the size 5, for example, so sort of a big hole for the needle to pass through); I wanted to have some that were super easy to use for our two-year-old, and others that were a little more challenging for the oldest and the four-year-old.  I also got some circles, which come in only one grid size (and will use the leftovers to make this fabulous travel sewing kit for myself!).  The plastic needles we keep in stock at Whipstitch, so I brought home four: one for each of the kids, and one for me.

While I’d love to offer you a concrete projecty-project that we did with these supplies, I mostly let this lesson be free-form, and allowed the kids to play with the tools and see what would happen.

The two-year-old tried threading the yarn in and out six or seven times, and then wandered away; I think to a degree, this was pretty challenging work for him, and he lost interest because it was above his interest level.  To lure him back, we spent some time touching the needle to see how sharp it was, looking at the colors of the yarn, and arranging the yarns into a rainbow.  I absolutely didn’t expect this to turn into a chance for him to show off his knowledge of colors, but he really enjoyed that–and his role became that of handing out yarn when his sisters asked for a new color.  Until he bailed again and went and played with his trains.

The four-year-old loved the whole concept from beginning to end.  She wanted to thread the needle, she wanted to poke it through the openings in the canvas, she wanted to change colors every thirty seconds.  But she got frustrated.  When we first began, I used basic Plastic Canvas Rules about how to treat the end of the yarn: ordinarily, when working on a project with plastic canvas, you’d leave the yarn end unknotted and work the loose end back under the stitches later, to secure it.  With an eager child who likes to YANK, that’s not gonna do the trick.  So we ended up doubling the yarn and knotting the end to make it possible for her to see results.

The oldest got much more into this than I expected–I think I’ve said that for every lesson, so maybe I should just start to realize that even at 15, she wants to feel included and she loves to do crafts and working with her hands gives her an excuse to be part of the hearth and the family.  She immediately decided on a formal shape to create, and began working away at it.  About halfway through, she saw that it was going to take her longer than she had imagined, and she slowed down a little.  It took some encouragement to prevent her from changing her design into something more simple just to make the work shorter, and to convince her to go with her original vision.

As the kids worked, I talked to the girls about colors and the color wheel.  As they created their projects, I worked on a couple of stitch samplers, and we looked at primary and secondary colors, our younger girl asked about how colors blend and we imagined where white and black fit in the color spectrum, our oldest asked what would happen if she skipped boxes or stitched straight lines versus diagonals, so we practiced on the color wheel.  It was a good chance to look at some more complicated color ideas while our fingers were busy with the repetitive motion of stitching the canvas.  It made the time pass a little more quickly as the girls reached their finish points, and made it a little easier to convince them to stick with it when there seemed to be miles of empty squares ahead of them.

Our oldest worked on a rainbow, her version of a color wheel.  The four-year-old did some random stitching at first, but then decided that she wanted to make a barn–after seeing what her sister and I were working on, she made the leap and realized that the stitches didn’t have to be random, but could be organized to make a picture.  Her barn is pink, naturally.

Even my husband played a little–I think he saw that we were all sitting around the table, talking and trying something new, and thought he would give it a whirl.  The children were delighted, I kid you not–they loved seeing Daddy with a needle in his hand.

It’s Like A Rubber Tree Plant

Once again, I learned more from the teaching than I think the kids did from the lesson.  I thought I was demonstrating to them that they could work at their challenge level–above the point where the work is super easy and they can mail it in, but not quite to the point where it’s so tough that they’re frustrated, right at that level where it’s hard and they have to push a little to get it, but that is totally achievable for them.  And I was, I was teaching them that.  But at the same time, I was learning the same lesson: persistence.  Trying one time didn’t get the needle and yarn to work for our four-year-old.  She needed to try over and over, and I needed to adjust how I’d assumed the whole project was going to work.  Practicing the action of slipping the needle into the canvas was OK for our youngest, but it was hard enough that he lost interest; rather than let him wander off and assuming that he was too young, I had to persist in finding a way to make him part of our time together, in making this craft something that was relevant to him.  Our oldest wanted to dial back and make the work easier, and I had to find ways to encourage her to continue on without quitting–but not make her feel as though she was obligated to do it, without taking the fun out of it.

As the kids learn more about sewing, the work gets more challenging, and they begin to have to think about three dimensions and right sides and wrong sides and matching seams and operating machinery.  This project might look simple at the outset, but it’s about building confidence, establishing a rhythm of work, and learning that there is totally a pay-off on the other side.  I think if we’d done this lesson when we normally would have, and weren’t racing bathtime and a little tired at the end of the day, I might have missed some chances to see better what my kids have to say about how they learn and what they learn.  We all really enjoyed working with the gridded lines, letting our brains have a break even before our bodies did, and settling in to the soft repetition of stitching in and out.  It makes me hopeful as we move forward that they’ll begin to associate sewing with happy times, loving times, trusting times.  And that after all, they’ll be persistent when they set a goal for themselves, because there is always something warm and happy waiting for them on the other side.

In the last lesson, Patience, my kids spent their wait time talking about colors and what matches and doesn’t match, and planning out designs and stringing their noodles into perfectly unique creations.  Totally love.  This lesson is an extension of that one, and builds a bridge between last week and next week with what I consider to be a super-essential character trait: Focus. As a former schoolteacher, I have spent wayyyyy too much time having to ask students–middle and high schoolers, in my case–to focus their attention on a SINGLE thing.  As adults, we are horribly, horribly hypocritical about this, as most of us struggle to do the very same thing.

Let’s Hear It For Single-Tasking

I’m gonna say it out loud now: I think Oprah was wrong about that whole multitasking thing.  I don’t think multitasking makes any of us better people or better workers, and it hardly ever makes what we produce better.  I know for a fact that meals I cook while trying to get the laundry done are never as delicious; projects I sew while trying to answer email are never as fast or accurate; and conversations I have with my husband while trying to wrangle the kids are never as deep or as intimate as I want them to be.  Even if the two tasks are good things, learning to focus is important for little ones so they’ll have the ability to turn their attention to what really, truly matters when the time is right. [Soapbox speech complete.]

So this activity–another spin-on-an-old-classic–is about sewing with our kids and asking them to focus.  Well, really, I didn’t have to ask: the beauty of working with lacing cards is that they inherently demand focus from our children, and that makes them a great tool for reinforcing that trait without having to be explicit.  In fact, we didn’t have big, fat, deep discussions about focusing while we did this–I think I said the word “focus” once or twice, and that was about it.  But the seed was planted, as it were.  And for younger kids, that’s enough at this point.  No sense beating them over the head.

We made our own lacing cards here, partly for the fun of it and partly because I think some of what I wanted my children to get out of it all was best served through customized shapes and design–more on that below.

We really made two sets, the first more durable and simply-shaped than the second.  These cards, made of card stock on top of cardboard, are sturdy enough for little hands and have clean lines, allowing them to double as manipulatives for demonstrating stitches and technique to older kids.

Most of the supplies are things we already had on hand (although I did go buy new colors of card stock, for variety): an empty cardboard box, paper scissors (NOT your good sewing scissors!), a standard hole punch, and a jar of rubber cement (yum).

Cut card stock and cardboard into simple geometric shapes, then glue the colored card stock on top of the cardboard.  Our boy and I found that rubber cement always works best when slightly dried so it’s tacky–he had a great time blowing on the pieces to dry them slightly before we stuck them together.

Once the rubber cement has dried, punch holes around the perimeter of each shape.  I won’t lie: this part was a little hard on the hands.  If you get stuck, try rotating the shape left and right while squeezing in place with the hole punch, kind of rocking it on the punch-point so it will pop through.  This is the only step that I didn’t actively encourage the kids to take part in, or that I wasn’t sure they’d be able to do–our oldest struggled a little, even, and complained that it hurt her hands.  High school can be so hard on one’s tender skin.

For the lacing, you could use a standard shoe lace, but I made a “needle” and “thread” with yarn and a one-inch-long piece of masking tape.  This made a longer point than a shoe lace has, and made it easier to demonstrate how to use a needle–it made the work a little more real to the little ones, and a little more manageable for our older ones.

I think you can figure out the basics of lacing the cards: put the “needle” through one of the holes, then pull the “thread” behind.  That’s the entry-level skill I want my kids to get out of this activity.  From there, the variations are what make it both interesting and more fun, as well as adaptable to different skill levels.  These shapes are great in that they’re stackable lacing cards, something I couldn’t find in stores no matter how hard I looked (well, OK, Googled–although this toy is cool and pretty close to what I had in mind).  With the littlest, who is not quite two-and-a-half, we spent some time working on how to get the lace through the holes, and then quickly moved on to lining up the holes so he could lace two at a time.

For the older kids, especially my 15-year-old, believe it or not, the sturdy cardboard made these great for teaching types of stitches and technique.  With the fat yarn and the chunky card, it’s easy to see the differences between a running stitch, a whipstitch (essential skill!) and a blanket stitch.  And because the cards are stiff, they make practicing these stitches super easy, too.  See?  And you thought lacing cards were just for occupying toddlers.

The second set we made are of card stock only, no cardboard backing.  These could, of course, be glued to cardboard as well, but I opted not to so that the children could work with something less forgiving.  I noticed that for our four-year-old, the softer cards were good for encouraging her not to yank too hard on the lace or she’d tear the paper–but to take up the slack and keep the lace taut so she’d have enough to go all the way around the shape.  It was an unanticipated lesson, but a great chance to ask her to focus on what she was doing, not get so excited that she damaged her work, and to work patiently through the card.

Each of these cards was printed on card stock using line art.  Download the images we used here, as a PDF, or create your own using line drawings or outlines you find online (try Googling for the name of the shape or picture you want, along with the keywords “line art,” “line drawing,” or “outline,” and then clicking on the “images” tab to locate the best art).  We spent some time coloring each card, which was a lot funner than I expected.  Our boy, especially, really got into it, and wanted to add his “artistic touches” to each and every card.  Please note that the downloadable PDF was creating using images I located through a Google search, and is for your personal use only.  Copyright for individual images belong to their owners.

These cards are also stackable, and we played a bit with putting one shape with another, just for kicks.  You could totally print these in color, laminate them, make a travel set, all kinds of things.  Want them to learn to lace their names?  Just grab a specialty punch that lets you get to the center of the paper, and go to town!  It’s an endlessly adaptable activity that can be recreated as your children grow to teach them new skills as they’re ready.

The Take-Away

Watching even the littlest ones really “get” sewing is super fun.  Watching them naturally turn their focus to a task is, quite honestly, inspiring.  Any parent will tell you: we learn as much from them as they do from us, if we’re paying attention.  And that’s what this lesson is really about.  Yes, I wanted them to learn to use a needle, to draw the thread, to create a stitch, to connect two pieces together.  But more than that, I wanted them to learn to follow their eyes, to give in to the moment, to experience something new fully–at least, I thought that was what I wanted, until I realized that I am the one who needed it most.

It sounds like there are a LOT of us who are looking for ways to introduce our kids to sewing, and you can’t know how excited that makes me!  When I was thinking through this series, I really wanted it to follow the same basic format as Stitch by Stitch, starting with simple projects and working up to more challenging ones, with each project contributing an essential skill (or two) to the toolbelt of new stitchers.  For that reason, this first lesson is a retake on an old classic that covers some (seemingly) simple skills that I think a lot of us take for granted.  I had a ball doing this one with our kids–all of the ones who walk and talk, ages 2 to 15–and love how their finished projects turned out.  I also loved the way they talked with one another as we worked, and the way they got excited as they went back to the activity over and over.

New Twist On An Old Classic

The very first skill new fingers must master in order to work their way up to the sewing machine is simply understanding what sewing is and how it works.  Seeing that thread can hold things together and keep them there, so that the finished product is something more than the initial bits and pieces–and that it can stay that way–is a huge part of conceptualizing sewing.  It’s something that we as adults take for granted, but that children need to have shown to them explicitly.  They catch on super fast, thanks to those sponge-like little brains, though, and this activity can take as little or as much time as you like.

Your standard macaroni necklace has been a mainstay of a zillion pre-school projects since…well, since you and I were that age, which is sayin’ something.  Adding color to the macaroni adds another stage to the process that allows kids to participate more deeply, and that gives you a chance to talk about colors and likes and dislikes and to demonstrate just how much freedom and artistic control sewing will allow them to have.  I love that this very simple project takes my kids through the act of manipulating the noodles in their hands (challenging for the youngest ones) to thinking about color and pattern (hypnotic for the older ones) and all the way up to making tricky combinations work (like adding bow tie pasta to the mix), which kept my oldest engaged (not to mention me).

To begin, let’s color the pasta.  I chose a number of different shapes, all in the standard store-brand dollar-a-box variety.  We used rigatoni, penne, farfalle (bow ties), and thought about elbow but ultimately decided that the openings were too small for the yarn I’d selected.  Each one was dipped in a color bath to make them vibrant and various and enticing to little hands.

This can be a messy activity, so be sure to cover your work surface with newspaper or newsprint to avoid stains.  Realistically, you won’t avoid spills altogether.

To make the color bath, combine 1/2 c rubbing alcohol with drops of food coloring.  I started with seven drops of each color, but in the end squeezed oodles and oodles of coloring into each bath to make them really rich and deep.  Dip the noodles into each bowl as you would Easter eggs: using a spoon, lower the noodles into the color, let them sit until you’ve achieved the shade you like, then remove them with the spoon, draining the excess liquid back into the bowl.  Place the noodles on paper towels to dry (making sure the alcohol doesn’t soak through the paper towels and newsprint on your table to the wood finish below, as the isopropyl will ruin the finish–ask me how I know).

Another caution: use care with children and rubbing alcohol, watching closely to ensure that none gets into little mouths.  It took some standing-up supervision to be sure that none of the noodles got licked by the littlest one, but it was worth it to see him participate.

The coloring was super fun, and was the first taste of what I hoped the kids would get out of this lesson: patience.  The noodles change pretty quickly from pasta-colored to vibrant pinks and blues and greens, but still must dry before they can be handled.  The alcohol allows them to retain their shape and dry quickly once they’re colored, but two- and four-year-olds don’t always like hearing they must wait to use their new treasures.  The time allowed us to start talking about what colors they might want to use, which shapes we needed more of, which shapes were in blue and which ones weren’t, and do some matching and thinking about the steps that come next.  I try not to get too gooey-touchy-feely about it, but I genuinely believe that a lot of life lessons can be taught over needle and thread, and loved seeing how naturally this one flowed from the simple activity at hand.  It urged my children to stop and think about what comes next, about their ideas and plans, to bring to the front of their minds the colors and shapes and their own expectations.  It didn’t ask them to slow down so much as to learn to wait.

And then we all got impatient and busted out the blow drier.

Once all the noodles are dry (or dry enough to handle), cut lengths of yarn that are at least long enough to reach to mid-chest on your child, plus a little overlap.  If you care to, wrap the ends of the yarn with masking tape to create an aglet that will make threading easier for tiny hands.  Allow the children to choose their first color and shape, and go to town!  I would suggest avoiding any pressure to create a pattern or a particular overall look at this point–the children seem to respond better and last longer in this activity if they’re able to drive the boat themselves, so to speak.  Talking about patterns is great here, and even better is making your own pattern while working side-by-side, then allowing them to look on and see it as they wish.

For the penne and the rigatoni, guiding the yarn through the hole was enough.  For the bow ties, we knotted the yarn around the center of the noodle to hold it in place, which also kept other noodles from falling off.  Too late, I wondered if we could have cooked spaghetti or fettucini long enough to soften them and then shape them around the handle of a spoon to see if we could make corkscrews–let me know if any of you test that and make it work!

As you can see, pajamas are totally appropriate for this particular activity.

Our boy, who is just over two, enjoyed the colorification of the noodles best, but understood the concept behind the threading and loved the feel and sound of the shapes under his hands.  Our four-year-old girl loved making sure there were enough purple and pink noodles for her needs, and then working with the yarn to get each noodle threaded–she was very focused and attentive as she worked.  Our oldest girl, 15, was surprisingly engaged during the whole process and got interested in putting together patterns and designing “jewelry” with the noodles–and to be honest, I didn’t really expect that.  I figured she’d be a helper and look at the whole project as baby stuff, but not really get excited.  It was super fun for me to have found such a simple activity that allowed each of the children to participate at whatever level they were interested, all at the same time, all while talking to one another and interacting in a non-screaming fashion.  Rare enough at our house.

I especially loved seeing my two girls talk.  The eldest was telling her younger sister about making patterns, and the younger one was insisting that her necklace HAD a pattern.  Which it didn’t.  Unless it was like pi, and her pattern repeated after a loooong time.  But hearing them talk about it was funny and made a nice moment to brighten my morning.

The Take-Away

While I think all of us want to really get to the Good Stuff and work with “real” needles and thread and the machine with our kids, it’s easy to forget that for them, ALL of this is the good stuff.  I want my children to see sewing as a privilege, not a chore, and I don’t want to introduce them to anything they aren’t asking for.  At the very beginning, it should be a game–don’t we all go to our machines for a respite from the rest of the world?  Don’t we want the same for our kids?  So while I suspect some of you might push back on this lesson, and think that you were hoping for a more in-depth, complicated activity to start us off, I encourage us all to learn the same lesson we’re looking to teach our children: patience.  If we sew it, they will come.

Next week: we’ll get more fancy.  Promise.  Until then, happy stitching!

I learned to sew from my mother.  She learned from her mother (with assistance from 4-H, I believe).  And her mother learned from her mother.  There’s something about that consistency that I really appreciate, that makes me look forward to sewing with my own kids.

My oldest has her own sewing machine and works up in her room on gifts for her friends, handbags upcycled from outgrown clothing and fabric she begs off of me when I’m feeling weak and willing–probably a stunning testament to her skills of persuasion, because I can’t remember the last time I gave fabric to anyone else.  The younger kids are just now getting to where they’re really curious about what I’m doing over there, wanting to touch all the notions and see just how sharp the pins really are and get out the fabric to dance with.  Our four-year-old is particularly fond of going into the scrap basket and building nests of fabric while I work (the two-year-old tends to prefer to pick up fat quarter bundles and untie them–his super hero identity is The Disassembler).

Teaching my oldest to sew is one thing–it’s like when my mom taught me, taking an idea and bringing it a little back down to earth from the stratosphere of Impossible Sewing Dreams, and then giving her the skills to get it done.  I’m embarrassed to admit that I started late with her, and really didn’t teach her much until she was 12 or so.  I’d thought about it for a long time–really ever since she asked to learn to knit and I got her a learn-to-knit book (and then had to teach myself first so I could teach her, while in the car on a road trip).  I’d even gotten her a Kids’ Sewing book, thinking it would be full of cool ideas that we’d do together and that would inspire her to go way beyond any sewing I’d ever done.  We were both, honestly, pretty disappointed.

The book was written FOR kids, so they could teach themselves to sew.  But what I wanted was something that would allow me to sew WITH her, a way for me to teach her the skills, but also to hang out with her and ask her questions and know her better.  I didn’t like that the book–and others I have found since then–was dumbed down a bit, as if she couldn’t grasp higher-level ideas, and that it lacked the heart and spirit I love so much about sewing with my children.  The closest I have seen to what I hoped for were Amanda Blake Soule’s books (which are excellent, and strongly recommended)–I just want to see more sewing sewing, and to relate that back to our relationships.  I have found, especially as we plow through these painful, treacherous high school years, that when my oldest and I have an acitivity to do together, we talk more and deeper and I learn things about her I wouldn’t any other way–like when we’re driving in the car, and she fesses up about a poor math grade, or when we’re doing holiday baking and she tells me about her newest crush.  I couldn’t get her to admit those things face to face, but when we’ve both got our hands busy, she relaxes and so do I, and suddenly, it’s a Hollywood Mothering Moment and I’m ready to go on Oprah and tell the world about how great it is to hang out with your kids.

Sewing is totally that for women already: we get our hands busy and it gives us common ground to tell each other thoughts that we’d probably deny eye-to-eye, and it takes our minds to a place where answers come more easily.  At least, it does for me.  And having a minute with my kids in that condition, well, that’s rare enough that I’m willing to do a little experimenting and see if there’s a way to be the mom I want to be while teaching them about something that I really, really love.

This series is about that: sewing WITH our kids, and at the same time, making a moment, for want of a better term.  I want my kids to remember playing with buttons and sorting through scraps and working with a needle the way I do–the way so many women our age have memories of being in their mother’s or grandmother’s sewing room and how that felt, in hands and in hearts.  Not to be super hokey or anything, but I think we pull our kids a little closer when we show them how to stitch.

Each of the projects is designed to teach a new sewing skill–from simple hand work all the way to sewing on a machine–and to introduce an idea or a thought or a character trait or a value that we want our kids to embrace.  Like persistence, or focus, or forgiveness.  Like patience, or caution, or sharing.  All of those are things that I learned by sewing, and things I want my kids to internalize and have forever.

I’ve designed these projects primarily for children aged 3-8, but I’d totally do them with a bunch of my lady friends over a glass of wine, so I think they have a pretty universal appeal.  I’ll share the first one next Thursday, and can’t wait to hear what you think!