We’ve been a bit hooptastic of recent…see these pumpkin hoops! But this is a really easy little sewing activity if you’ve an hour spare and it’s a rainy afternoon! I had seen the idea here and thought it would be a perfect way to teach the girls how to sew on buttons and keep their running stitch straight.
You’ll need:
embroidery hoops (I used 7 inch) || plain fabric || green embroidery thread || buttons || fabric pen
While my older two were doing this you can see how I kept my 4 year old busy at the end of the post!
When we had our fabric taught in the hoop I used a fabric pen to place a dot where each running stitch row should begin and end. This gave them a bit of an ideas although they wanted some ‘stems’ to be shorter than others so it simply worked as a guideline.
They knotted their thread and completed their running stitch between the 2 points. At the top they sewed on their button and knotted at the back.
They repeated this for how many flowers they wanted.
Abi wanted to make it for her cousin so she used the fabric pen to write the name and simply stitched along the letters.
When they were done I trimmed the fabric, snipped around the edge (see here) and used the glue gun to glue these to the back edge of the hoop. You can see the workings on the back of the hoops but I quite liked this and didn’t feel an urge to ‘finish’ it. If you would prefer a neater look then you could glue a circle of felt into the centre of the back like in Maddie’s hoop below.
And that was it…so simple but a really good wee exercise in some of the basics of hand sewing.
While we were doing this I gave Maddie a smaller hoop (5 inch) and hand stretched some hessian in it.
She chose some different colours of embroidery thread and I knotted them together, as well as knotting the thread to the needle. This kept it from slipping out and meant she was engrossed for longer, freeing me up to help out the other 2 as needed.
I just focused on getting her to move the needle ‘down’ and ‘up’ through the fabric. She kept repeating this like a little mantra. She was so pleased with her colourful hoop.
We glued the edges down with a glue gun and fluid a piece of felt to the back to keep it neat.
It’s now sitting pride of place in her bedroom.
xx
To see who I’m linking up with head here.
love this! If it's kid sowing skills, then I know it's at my possible level haha
Ahhh you're too hard on yourself…sewing is great – bar the cutting, everything else can be pulled out and redone! That's why it's so great!! 🙂
Oh my goodness, what a cute craft!!! I would love for you to share this post at my Create & Share Link Party! Hope to see you there 🙂 http://www.designsbymissmandee.com/
Would love to…heading your way now!! 🙂
hurrah for maddie!!!
Yay!! I know…she loved it!!