Hogwarts House Scarve

Sewing Experiences

As part of my kids Halloween costumes we sewed house scarves together. It was very interesting to see parts of their personalities come out through their sewing.

 

I started with “Spiderman Jr.”  He was excited about being in Hufflepuff and wanted to be warm.  We spent two hours sewing this together. He carefully watched how I showed him to cut the squares the first time. Then as he cut the squares himself he asked if he had it right and when I said yes he would congratulate himself on being so smart. I could tell his hands were tired near the end from all the pinning because he started using different fingers to pin that were not his thumb and pointer finger to grab the pins. This is actually really good for him since he needs to work on his fine motor skills.  He finished his scarf and wanted to show everyone what he had made.

 

“Future Author” wanted to work on hers next.  She cut out each square with expressions of I don’t want to cut it wrong and me in turn telling her she is doing fine. Then when we came to the pinning she wanted to put them far away from the edge. The pins were so far away that they were almost in the middle of the pieces of fabric. I had to explain why she needed to have them by the edge of the fabric to get a better result. 

Then when she tried sewing on her own for the first time (I thought this would be a good first time since this scarf was simple) she sewed close to the pins at first then went far around them rather than remove the pins.

 So when she showed me what she had done I looked at it and had to think hard about how to explain that she had to take her first effort apart and try again. We talked about how she needed to not avoid the pins but slow down and take them out so that she could get a straight line and thus have the look she wanted on her seams. It was hard for her to hear that she had to take it out and redo it but she did it.

She was cruising along and them made another mistake and had to seam rip again but this time she put a hole in the fabric when she took it apart.  She was in tears now. This was not turning out to be the experience I wanted for her the first time she used the machine by herself. 

She was so upset that she wouldn’t touch her scarf again for a couple of days.  When she was ready to work on it again she wanted to still do the pinning herself (an additional skill she had gained with the project) but she wanted me to do the sewing. I accepted her terms, it was still progress in her sewing skills and it kept her from swearing off sewing all together.  When she finished she wore her scarf around all that day even though she is a naturally hot blooded person. I was very proud of her finishing the scarf when I know she wanted to give up.

 

When working with our “Little Fish” she needed verbal confirmation the first time she cut her pieces of fabric for her scarf then she continued working after that till she was done.  It took a few tries to have her do the pinning right and to put the pieces of fabric together properly so they would make a scarf. When she made these mistakes I showed her why that way would not work and she took it great. Her response was always something to the effect of “Oh is see.” When she was sewing the pieces of fabric  together she wanted to try on the scarf after each piece was added in the pattern to see how far she had come.  I could see her sense of accomplishment when she finished the last square.

 

For “Soccer Boy” it was a truly challenging for his patience. He often can see where something is going and will make logical leaps in his mind.  This benefits him in many areas of his life. However, he wanted to start working on his scarf when I was still helping “Little Fish” so I paused with her briefly to show him the first step.  I told him how to lay the fabric and cut right along the edge.  I didn’t think much of letting him do this. It had not been difficult for any of his other siblings even if they lacked confidence in their skills.

However,”Soccer Boy” took a logical leap with his cutting. This resulted in pieces that were not even because he cut where I hadn’t told him to and didn’t take the time to make sure the fabric was flat before cutting.

 As a result when he showed me his pieces of fabric that he had cut and they were not close to straight (we could of worked with a little off) or even more challenging close to even in size among the pieces of fabric. My face must have reflected that there was a problem with what he had done because his face fell. So I had to rapidly explain what the problem was with the pieces not being straight or even.  I told him I would give it some thought and see if I could think of a way to make it work.

I didn’t have much hope without making his scarf very small and I didn’t want it small and neither did he.  Then I remembered that I had gone back to the store for extra of the Gryffindor colors on a prompting for the Holy Ghost the day I bought the material.  I told “Soccer Boy” about this, he could start again from the beginning but this time he would need to wait till I could be right there to walk him through it.  He agreed to wait this time.

When we went through the process we were able to talk about what he had done and why sewing is not like math or predicting where the plot is going in a story; steps should not be skipped in sewing and working more slowly is actually faster because you make less mistakes this way.  He looked at me like I was crazy when I said “slower is faster in sewing”. I had to laugh at the look on his face.  So I was able to use his own work as an example because he had hurried and not been careful it was now taking longer because he had to redo the work again. I could see the light go on in his mind.

Then we had another learning moment when he sewed a piece the opposite direction of the others.  So we got to talk about checking that something is going to work before sewing it together. In the end he finished it and he seemed really happy to have his scarf but he was glad he was done sewing.

I don’t know if all these experiences I had with my kids that have the potential to be life lessons if my kids take it that way will sink in. However, I learned a lot about each of them and about how to correct my kids a little better when they make mistakes.