Tag Archives: quilting with kids

• 18 Comments

•

With the new year I started the new project of teaching my 4 1/2 year old son to quilt. He's making a simple one-block quilt with six rows of six blocks.

This week he pieced the last set of pairs together and then pieced the pairs all together into rows, so we ended the week with six pieced rows. The biggest problem we're having is getting him in a good position so he can see well and not lean his elbows on the edge of the table (which is stopping his hand from moving with the fabric).

Once he finished piecing the blacks into pairs, he used his planning picture (on the computer screen) to lay all the pieces out on the floor.

Then he pieced the three sections in each row together.

Here are the completed rows.

And we numbered some flowerhead pins so he could label the rows. (He loves pinmoors.)

I had planned to teach him to press the seams once he finished piecing the rows, but I decided I'm not sufficiently ready to do that. See, I press the seams open for ease of quilting so it's quite a picky job. Instead, I decided I'd let him help me iron my yardage and fat quarters that I needed to cut for one of my projects. He'll be able to help me finger press the seams open and watch me do that pressing job. In the end he did get his hands on the iron, and carefully pressed some of my purple fabric. (Now all the pieces for my Rainbow Mini Swap quilt are cut out! Yay!)

I realized since he is left-handed I needed to have him stand on the other side:

This week he also learned about the fancy stitches that the machine can do. (He was a little disappointed that he couldn't use these for piecing the blocks.) He can almost change the presser foot himself. I showed him how to thread the whole machine and he threaded the needle. He also did some measuring for fun.

For my related one-block project, I turned my pile of partially pieced blocks into a completed quilt top this week. My daughter's "pattern" is growing on me. From this:

To this:

If you're just joining us you can check out Part 1 and Part 2 of this series. :-)

Continue following along with Part 4.

Linking up to Fabric Tuesday.

• 26 Comments

•

With the start of the year I started the new project of teaching my 4 1/2 year old son to quilt. This week we had a chance to get started with the piecing.

At this point I'm still working the pedal for him (very slowly) while he guides the fabric. (Yay for the 1/4" foot!) He's learned all about the parts of the machine (presser foot, feed dogs, etc.) and the basics for how to sew (putting up/down the pressure foot, changing the foot on the machine, how to put the bobbin in). He's especially focused on using a light touch to hold onto the fabric while he guides it. Now he says, "check how easy it is to pick up my hand, mom." And when he gets too firm of a grip then I shake his hand and remind him to have spaghetti fingers. ;-) He's become a chain piecing machine and likes the "mountains of fabric" it makes behind the machine.

We're working toward piecing each row. So far he's pieced the 3rd to 4th and 5th to 6th piece in each row. To stay organized, as he's pieced each batch he's laid them out on the floor to compare to his planned pattern. He likes all the tools, so he's been excited to use the wonder clips and pinmoors to keep his fabric organized and labeled.

keeping organized
C2 and C3 for column 2 and column 3

This week I hope we get to finish piecing the rows together and I can teach him to press the seams. I'll show you my progress on the other one-block quilt from my part 1 post next week.

Continue following how we're doing in Part 3.

Linking up to Sew Cute Tuesday, Fabric Tuesday, Show & Tell Tuesday and WIP Wednesday.

• 18 Comments

•

My son is in his second year in a Montessori preschool and this year he's really enjoyed the hand sewing projects in class. He started on a plastic canvas sewing project, spiraling in from the outside border. Then one of the teachers drew him a rat to stitch on burlap. And now he's working on sewing a teddy bear which I suspect is intended to become a pillow (no picture -- think two teddy bear shaped cutouts of woven fabric, sewing them together with regular needle and thread around the edge).

school sewing project -- progress pic

Seeing how excited he's been about sewing I invited him to help me machine piece some seams on the drawstring bag I was making for my mother-in-law. He really enjoyed that. I asked him if he'd like to learn how to make a quilt and he was THRILLED!

Step One: He raided my stash of fabric and selected a variety of animal prints.

He's even decided on a friend who he intends to give it to. (Yes, it's kind of killing me that I don't get to keep his first quilt!) But I appreciate how excited he is to give this gift. We'll see how he's feeling once it's done.

In the interest of keeping it simple, we'll be using 6" finished squares. I'll be making a small quilt alongside him so that I can show him the process with my blocks in an effort to let him do as much of his own sewing as possible.

Step Two was to cut out all the squares. I did that myself, cause I'm just not so excited about handing a rotary cutter to a 4-year-old. :-) He hung out with me while I cut out the squares as I was not granted permission to do that step without him. That also meant that my 2 1/2-year-old daughter hung out with us. She enjoyed being "in charge" of the scraps of leftover fabric.

Step Three: He meticulously laid out his 36 blocks in his own pattern. Not knowing in advance that there was going to be a pattern requiring multiples of 3 of the same print we had to pitch a few blocks and managed to find one more suitable fabric that I could get three squares out of. It happened to be my leftover fabric from making my daughter's pants. She was concerned that I was cutting up her pants. She kept telling me that she didn't want me to cut them, she wanted to wear them. Here's his final layout.

Fabric and layout selected by my 4-year-old son.

Now, since her brother got to "make a pattern" with his quilt squares, she naturally decided that she should get to make a pattern as well. So I let her choose the layout for my 35 blocks (I didn't manage to end up with 36 due to a flaw in one of my fabrics). She and I have a different idea of what "pattern" is, but I've decided to go with it. No idea what I'll be doing with this quilt. She won't be doing the sewing, so I think her contribution to our project ends here.

Layout by my 2 1/2-year-old daughter.

Have you taught a young child to quilt? Any tips?

See how our project is going in Part 2 of this series.