Teaching children to sew

Last summer, I started a new tradition with my grandchildren who live close. I let each one come separately to spend a full day and night with their grandparents. They get to go out to eat for one meal wherever they want to go and we chose (free) activities that we can do with them. They get our full attention.

This summer, I determined that I would teach my granddaughter to sew. She did a little embroidery and machine-sewing. It turned out well. I thought about taking pictures, but I didn't.

When my 5 year old grandson came, he asked to learn to sew also. I told him that I would teach some hand sewing to him, not machine sewing and he was okay with that. He asked if he could make a light saber pillow and we did it! (Though you need to use your imagination to realize that is what it is.) Pictures came later with him also, but at least I remembered eventually. I started out by cutting a 6" wide strip of red felt approximately 3 feet long. I also cut out a 6" wide strip of grey felt about 8" long. He said that a red button was necessary so we went through my stash and found one. He sewed that on to the grey felt. He sewed the red piece to the grey piece along the width and then sewed the entire length of the saber leaving about 5" open so that we could turn and stuff the pillow. He hand sewed the entire thing. Then he stuffed it.

I used a chopstick to stuff the stuffing in better and whipstitched the opening closed. Here are the results. I am so proud of him! He did a great job!

Redwork Pillow

I should be at the Summer movies today. It is a program presented by our local theater. It costs $7 to go to 10 movies one each week in the summer. The movies are kid friendly and are usually kid movies that have shown in the previous year (though never Disney movies.) I go with my sister, my DIL and my grandchildren. My DIL opted out because one child was super fussy and she thought it might be too intense for another. We eventually got into the movie and found it was too intense for another of the grandchildren, so I left the older children with my sister and took the other grandchild to my house. As he watches a movie of his choice, I will share this, my latest project.

I have always loved hand embroidery probably because it was something my mother enjoyed. In fact, my sister and I were married in a wedding dress that had hand-embroidered roses all over. Each of the women in the family spent weeks embroidering those roses.

I have never tried redwork but have wanted to. I decided that I needed to try it and, of course, a pillow is always my favorite item to sew. I have wanted this pillow for my sewing/craft/guest room.

In doing this redwork, I have found that texture becomes very important. You will notice that some areas of the redwork stand out. It is because I used different stitches. When I first started, I just used the stitch that was easiest. Later, I started paying attention to the end look.

I did just a little patchwork and because I did and because I am horrible at figuring that stuff out, my 14" pillow is really about 12 3/4". I don't really care. I was able to make the 14" pillow form fit inside and that was all I cared about.

Circles Pillow

Have you ever fallen in love with a piece of fabric? If you sew, I suspect you have. I fell in love with a red fabric back in September of 2010. I am not sure what it is. It is soft, tough, doesn't ravel and feels like a suede though it doesn't have a nap like a suede. I bought it at Goodwill on half price day to make armbands for costumes. This is what they looked like.

Yes, that is a fake arm! We did a play where the girls chopped off fake arms.

I thought that the fabric deserved to be showcased so I came up with this project.

I was disappointed in the way it went together, but have since realized that I mounted the fabric to a very flimsy backing and what should I expect?

I still loved the fabric though and I had a little left. What to do? I saw a knock-off on-line of this pillow...

available here from Crate and Barrel. I would love to point you back to the original post that I saw, but I had issues with my browser and had to delete the history which is where I had the information.

It took every last bit of my material to make my version of this pillow. I had to make it 11 x 11 because I didn't have enough fabric to do any more than that. I used the Sizzix Circles #2 die to cut out the circles and since the fabric is hard to pin through, I used some "Quilt Basting Spray" to tack the circles in place while I sewed it. This spray specifically does not clog up the needle or sewing machine.

And here is the final project...

I dearly love this, my final project, made with this fabric.

Blue Angry Bird

My two year old granddaughter felt left out when she didn't get an angry bird pillow so I agreed to make one for her. I used the same basic style as my red angry bird pillow so I didn't do a new tutorial.

Here is the pillow with the paper patterns I designed...

Here it is with the cut-out felt pieces...

And the finished project...

I did a few things differently with this angry bird. I decided to machine applique all the facial features with black since the game's characters themselves are done that way. I also made a big mistake when I used quilting thread. I knew better... quilting thread is a much thicker thread, but I didn't realize I had done it until I was putting the thread away. No wonder my machine kept getting stuck and stitching and stitching in the same place! It still didn't look too bad (though if you look closely, you will see some spots that are mountains of thread.) Also, I decided to use Fray Check on the thread ends of the machine applique. I have looked at some of the machine applique that I have done in the last little while and find that the threads have started to come loose. Hopefully Fray Check will help.

NICU Smocks

I have a friend who recently had twin daughters 2 months early. They each weighed a little over 2 pounds at birth. She had a shower and received many things for full-term girls, but I wanted to do something for her babies while they were in the NICU.

I found this tutorial. and decided that this might be just the thing. I made a set, but decided that if she liked them, I would make more. She let me know that they were great!

I cut out several sets.

Then I started to sew.

I looked at the smocks and decided I needed to do something to make them more girly. I knew that I couldn't sew on lace or the like, because it could damage the babies' delicate skin. I decided to use the velcro that was already a part of the smock's design and I made these...

This is how they look on the smocks.

I think they turned out well. What do you think?

Update on Jeanine

Jeanine recently had a PET scan. This is a common scan used to find new outbreaks of cancer in the body. It is not always used for kidney cancer because this type of cancer does not always show on the scan. In Jeanine's case, it seems to show her cancer.

We went to the doctor today and he told us what we had already read on the report. The cancer seems to be advancing in the liver on its outer edges. But we didn't know the rest of the story. The measurements that the radiologist reported are small enough that in most cases, it is not even considered to be a cancer-caused difference. The doctor questioned Jeanine and with no other symptoms to indicate changes in her condition, he is happy to continue with the Avastin and see what happens in another couple of months. In other words, Jeanine seems to still be doing well. Hooray!

Yellow Angry Bird Pillow

When one of my grandsons learned that I was going to make a red angry bird pillow for his brother, he had a request of his own. Would I make him a yellow angry bird pillow? Not surprisingly, the second went together much faster than the first. I have only a few pictures of this sewing project since it uses the same techniques as the red bird pillow. I think I like the yellow angry bird even more than the red. To see the red angry bird pillow tutorial, go here. I cut a 14" square out of a large piece of paper and then folded it in half. I carefully cut a diagonal from one edge to the center on the opposite side (using the fold to know where the center was). I then cut the other side the same way. I ended up with a triangle. I rounded the corners to make sewing easier. I then cut 2 from 1/2 yard of yellow fleece and cut another 4" gusset piece in the same manner as before. I designed the facial features and laid them out before sewing the pillow together as previously explained for the red angry bird. I only stuffed the top half of the beak on this bird. As I said, this is my favorite of the two. Who knows? Maybe I'll find a need to make the rest. We'll see.