The 2 older girls have had a surge in sewing interest the last month or so. Sadie made this amazing inchworm from one of our favorite books ever, Hillary's Wee Wonderfuls 24 Dolls to Love and Sew. She sleeps with the book in her bunk. For this project, she cut out the pieces and sewed it all herself. Delia got help with her dinosaur, but also did a lot of the handwork herself, including the ever-popular stuffing. Delia is actually more interested in cross-stitch which is thrilling to me.
I remember actually worrying a little about giving them opportunities to try handwork—building, sewing, knitting, and all that. For many years, they seemed not too interested. I didn't push it, but just always had supplies around. When their skills caught up with their ideas, they took off, and now devour all craft books and sewing books and are starting to knit as well. I think just having books around them helps. I don't really talk about it much but they always see me making something, so it's in their daily life. I was so excited to have them start sewing, like when they were way too little. I wanted so badly to do projects with them. Now I can barely keep up. It's pretty awesome. And what an incredible book Hillary has written! I keep singing her praises out loud when we sew another one of her designs. Her directions are so clear and amen to full size patterns!
Sewing with them is a homeschooling dream because of all the steps, planning, math, and problem solving that happens. Because it's me with only 3 of them they can tackle much more exciting projects because I can help them as much as they need for as long as they want and they get to decide on exactly what they want to do, instead of being told what the project is.
Unrelated-
- I got these shoes and I love them so much, as do my feet. I am wearing them with tights right now. They are vintage cute and yes, some might find them incredibly ugly, but others (myself included) will appreciate the granny-chic of them.
- Speaking of grannies, Grammie is blogging! Check her out over at the Tillie Studio Blog and see what she has been up to with customer quilts and musings on machine quilting.
