Teach Your Child
the Lifelong Skill of Sewing

Introduce the basics of sewing to your children

Does your child love making things? Well teaching them how to sew gives them a wonderful lifelong skill and it’s also great fun. At any age, children can learn some form of sewing that may eventually see them making large, complex projects and even their own clothing.

Sewing has enormous benefits for children and teaches them patience, helps their hand-eye coordination, confidence and discipline. These are important and valuable skills that are useful with learning anything else in life.

With sewing machine skill and some imagination, children and adults can have a lot of fun and create some unusual and colourful craft pieces.

It’s easy to encourage your child to really engage with and enjoy their sewing project. Let them pick out the things they need, which might result in unusual combinations of colors, but that only adds to the fun.

All you need to teach sewing to children is patience and allow them to take it at their own pace. But most importantly, you must always have fun.

Hand sewing

Knowing how to sew by hand is one of the most rudimentary skills that can be very useful, even for simple everyday things like sewing a button on.

Hand sewing is a good way to introduce the basics of sewing to children – including:

• securing thread,
• putting the right sides together,
• understanding what a seam is and
• how they can undo any mistakes.

They can begin by sewing two pieces of fabric together. There will inevitably be different sized stitching and they will struggle staying near the edge.

When they start to feel more confident, get your children using smaller stitches of the same size, before encouraging them to keep a straight line. With practice, they will soon find this becomes much easier, as they learn the basics of sewing.

Using the sewing machine

Sewing machines can be great fun to use. There's a wide range available, so if you don't have one already, it's important to choose a machine that’s appropriate for kids.

You should start with showing them how to be safe when using the machine and explaining to them where they should and should not put their hands. You can start off simply with you controlling the fabric, while they work the pedal. Once they've watched you and start to feel more comfortable, then they can take charge of the fabric too.

Beginner sewing projects

When introducing a child to sewing, you'll need fun projects that will interest them but not take ages to complete. If it's something that they can use or give as a gift, then that’s even better.

Doll clothes

Doll clothes offer children a great way to start sewing. Perhaps start by making a simple dress that involves seaming and basic hemming. You can then build from there. By learning to make doll clothes, your child can learn basics techniques, which they can develop later on to make clothes for people.

For a beginner sewing project for children it's always good to start with creating something playful, such as clothes for their rag dolls.

Lavender bags

For this simple project, you will need small fabric rectangles, thread, lavender, needle and zig zag scissors. Cut out your fabric, ideally with zig zag scissors to stop the fabric fraying. Don’t tie a knot when you start, but instead, leave a small piece of thread to tie at the end. Use a running stitch and sew three sides of the rectangle together. It doesn’t matter if it’s uneven, the stitching won’t be seen when it’s finished. Fill the little bag with lavender, sew to the end and then tie a knot in the two bits of thread.

Owl glove toy

To make the owl, they'll need a glove, buttons, felt, stuffing, needle and thread. Turn your glove inside out and sew across the fingers. The little finger and index finger will become the ears. Turn the glove back the right way around and pull out the ears. Stuff the glove and shape the toy while stuffing. Cut out some owl’s feet from the felt, and sew these into the cuff seam, tucking in any bits of the cuff that stick out. Your child can now make their owl come to life by adding eyes, a beak and wings.

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