Sewing with Children!

Teaching all week has kept us very busy. Audrey and I just love teaching these young girls to sew.If you are a parent or seamstress looking for ideas for your young children, keep up with us on this blog for some proven ideas that have worked. Share our successes....and the ones that failed too!

 The past few weeks have been spent at All Saints Day School in Carmel Valley with girls from the Summer Fun in the Sun Camp Program. For more information on their Summer Program go to Summer Camp

This past week we had nine girls in our "Sew Much Fun" class. I learned that the more sewing machines is not the better choice very quickly. With just two machines, I could sit here in the middle between two girls on machines and keep an eye on both of them easily. When we had more machines, I had to run back and forth and we had so many jam ups, broken parts and frustration that one machine (after having had the belt broken) and another after having the lever broken ( which I did manage to repair on my own and I am proud of that btw) were both retired for the rest of the week.

 While I am helping one student, this little cutie was hamming it up for a photo op. I let the students take turn getting pictures of each other. This one below is probably my favorite goofy picture of the week. Notice they are wearing their awesome hats made from up-cycled t-shirts.

 Playground time is important. I don't mind having yard duty because I get to interact with the girls out of the classroom for a big and learn more about them. I love how fast they make friends each week. I also noticed that my class always seems to stick together at recess.

                                                       Little Monkeys!

Decorating and sewing on our denim (and one t-shirt) garments was extremely fun with this exhuberant group. We had a combo of jeans, shorts, skirts and one overall skirt. This was the most interesting one because it was an overall skirt that was too small for the child so it involved a bigger challenge. She was not very excited about it because in her mind, this was a baby outfit that she grew out of in pre-school so why would she want to wear it again.

As you can see, our darling little seamstress is holding up her old daycare uniform and it is inches too small. But we checked and it would fit around her still as a skirt. So first thing we did was to cut off the bib part. I took the "skirt" portion home and serged it off around the top for her. She folded it down and we added elastic at the back for a better fit. The side buttons were still useful so those were left. She worked hard at the painting part, both front and back.

                                    The serged back waistband with elastic is shown here.

 My cute student put two hand stitched appliques on front along with some gems, a flower applique that was purchased at the store, charms, decorative paint and glitter gel.  For added interest,  a Hello Kitty Charm by the pocket. After the patches were hand sewn on the back behind the star and leaf, I helped the students sew the inverted appliques on top of their patches and cut out only the top portion.

Another cute charm is attached on the back pocket and she painted around each pocket with glitter gel paints. It turned out really cute. We also added a ribbon belt, which can be seen in the first photo in the blog on the far right. Her grandparents came to the Show and Tell Program and really loved her creation.

Other wonderful denim creations from our students this past few weeks:

 Great concentration while working, it helps to wear her new beanie hat that she made in class.

                                 These shorts were so cute! I would wear them myself.

The best part of a week at camp is making new friends!

Audrey and I will be back at camp next week for another class of "Sew Much Fun" with an American Girl Doll Theme. If you are interested, check out the camp at http://www.asds.org/summer