Sewing With Kids: My Son’s First Project

This week my husband had 3 days off work for summer holidays and so on one of our quiet-at-home days, I decided it was time to do some sewing with my son! He’ll be 5 in November, and is highly creative, so while I do most of the actual sewing, he can easily choose fabric and colours and make a plan! So I suggested that he could make a square pillow for his bed, and he leapt at the idea.

I started by selecting a few different feature prints from my stash with the thought that it would be the backing and we could then use it to choose some fabrics based on the colours in it. He loved this Kokka scientist fabric, because daddy is a scientist! I then asked him what colours he would like to choose from the variety included in the print. As you can see, he ended up choosing all of them except pink! He would choose a colour and I’d pull out a few prints for him to choose. He especially loved the “crunchy” print – aka the red chevron! He then settled down with paper and Frixion markers to work out what he wanted to do.

And this is side 1! He came up with two plans in the end, and decided that instead of using the scientist fabric as a backing, we’ll use it for borders on both sides. First project and he already wants it reversible! So I will be doing a covered zipper closure on the bottom.

I made sure to involve him at every step of the process. When talking about arranging the fabric, we talked about things like making sure the elephants were facing the right way up – he’s a perfectionist just like his mother, so I knew it was something that would frustrate him later on if it “wasn’t right”! We talked about sewing seams, and making sure they’re straight to make things square. He decided he was in charge of lifting the foot, and sometimes the back-stitch button too. And he even helped me press the seams and block at the end. He can’t wait to do the rest!