Monday, August 30, 2010

Summer Sewing for Kids

I've been working with my daughter on sewing this summer. It has gone surprisingly well. I wanted to "branch out" and show her how to strip piece a 9-patch block. Super easy technique if you've never tried it.


So, one day she and her best girlfriend were over sewing. We all cut 4 1/2" strips of fabric. I explained to them how we'd sew the strips, then cut the strips into squares. The girls seemed pretty excited and worked really quickly.


Each girl had a different number of strips and a whole different method of how they should be laid out.

Then the strips were complete. Roughly 30" x 44" (width of fabric). They were so proud. So I tell them "Now we cut this piece into about 9 strips."

... dead silence ...

Turns out, stripe-y quilts were a ga'thousand times better than checker-board quilts. And that was that. It was so funny to see their faces when I suggested they slash into the tops they had just created.

We finished off one quilt by using the "birthing method" or "pillow-case method", where the quilt doesn't have a binding and the three layers are secured after the edges are finished. Here's one of the quilters finishing up the perimeter before tying the layers.

*Fabric by Jackie Clark for Benartex

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6 comments:

Sherry said...

how cute I would. One day I will be doing the same thing with my great niece.

Angie said...

I'd love to see the final picture of the quilts. That sounds really neat. So how big were their quilts? Were they the 30-44" for say a babydoll or did they do a throw size. Just curious. They sound really cute!

Angie said...

I forgot to check the box for the follow up comments. :0)

Lauren The Artist said...

The quilts were about 40" x 24", or right in there.

Corinne said...

The "birthing method"???? That's a new one on me. I get the technique, but I have never heard it called that before. Made me want to go sort of "Ewwww." :-)

Anonymous said...

Awesome! They should be so proud of their quilts. I would like to see those little fingers protected with ruler guards though! (O'Lipfa and Guidelines4Quilting make them. The O'Lipfa are permanently affixed and the G4Q have suction cups for moving from ruler to ruler.)