Tiny Sewists: Teaching Kids to Sew :: Lesson 8, Project 2

Today as we continue on with Tiny Sewists: Teaching Kids to Sew Arden and I worked together on a joint sewing project.  She learned to quilt following a line drawn on fabric, and got to have fun with the decorative stitches on her machine.  If you are just now joining the series, please be sure to start at the beginning with Setup & Safety.
To introduce more skills to Arden, I decided to resurrect a project from two years ago where I made a custom teddy bear sleeping bag for one of Arden’s stuffed toys, Charlie.

Arden wanted to make a bag for this bear she’s named Carrot.  We sorted through my bins of fabrics and binding and together we chose these three fabrics.  The dog fabric is quite exciting, no?  Some of the ears and puffs on the poodles are sparkly!

We began by measuring Carrot to arrive at the dimensions needed for the bag.  Ours came out to 9″x7″ for the front and 9″x12″ for the back.

I used a quilting ruler and rotary cutter to cut one piece of each dimension from each of the outer and lining fabrics.  I also rough cut pieces of warm n’ natural quilt batting to slightly larger than the fabrics.

I made a quilt sandwich with the batting in between the two fabrics wrong sides together.  I basted a line of stitching all the way around to hold everything together so Arden could concentrate on stitching, not avoiding quilt pins.  You could hand baste, or if you have basting spray this would likely work even better!  Not pictured is that I marked vertical lines every 1″ with a disappearing marking pen for Arden to follow with her stitching.

Now it’s Arden’s turn!  She chose all different fancy stitches on her machine and followed the lines I had drawn.  She even chose a blind hem and overcast stitch.  This was really fun because she got to be in control of the stitches used in her project.  Since we didn’t use a walking foot, there was a little bit of creasing at the bottom edge, but that will get covered up with binding.  I think introducing a walking foot would be a bit much for this beginner project.

Here’s the first piece all finished!  Repeat on the other.

Then I trimmed the batting away and got it pretty close to squared up.  On Thursday, we’ll finish up the project with an easy “cheater” quilt binding appropriate for a young sewist.

Next up: Lesson 9

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5 Responses to Tiny Sewists: Teaching Kids to Sew :: Lesson 8, Project 2

  1. Ajaire February 19, 2014 at 1:56 AM #

    Yet another cute first project. This series is making me so excited for when my girl is old enough 🙂

    • Jenn AJennuineLife February 19, 2014 at 8:30 PM #

      I think I’m having even more fun watching her learn and seeing her excitement!

  2. kathy February 19, 2014 at 4:27 AM #

    love this! It might even interest my girls to try to sew with me! I am going to show them tomorrow. (Mine are picky about sewing)

    • Jenn AJennuineLife February 19, 2014 at 8:30 PM #

      I’d love to hear if they took the bait. Sleeping bags for everyone!

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