Craftiness inherited

I love the fact that my kids are now of the age that they are starting to learn how to sew and craft by themselves. I try to offer them proper tools to practice with and my kids often surprise me with their skills.

K made this hand puppet a year ago in preschool. This year at the afternoon club at his school, he has learned how to make rubber band bracelets. He also made a tunic for the puppet in a bout of creativity.

One day I was fixing my wooden flower boxes that were destroyed by some heavy wind. K saw the tools and left-over pieces of wood and asked if he could build something. He said that he had learned how to use tools at his other club. I was a bit worried since it was time for me to go fetch his sister from the daycare, but after forbidding him to use sharp knives and telling him to have his mobile ready in case of emergencies I left him to work. After I came back he showed that he made a performing stage for his sister’s Lego Friends. He said that, because S hasn’t got the Lego package with the stage, he wanted to make her one. I was moved with this brotherly love! K also wanted to paint the stage and this time S was sitting next to him to give suggestions for the colors. This is what S finally got:

Since I have been sewing a lot, K has become quite curious about how the sewing machine works. I suggested sewing some little toy for a practice, since that is how I learned to sew when I was a kid. On one free day we then started with the free Bean Bag Frog pattern from Ottobre Design web page. I helped with some tricky parts but K found machine sewing surprisingly fun. We decided to forgo the beans and used some polyester padding to fill the frog. Finally K’s dad helped to glue the eyes in place. The end result looks cute!

S is keen on drawing and crafting, too. One day I found an old embroidery hoop with some embroidery yarn at the local recycling center. She immediately wanted to know how to use it. I did not even have any proper embroidery fabric or pattern but I took a piece of some white sheet cotton and drew a cross-stitch “S” on it with a magic marker. S started immediately stitching it and was actually quite talented. Soon she wanted another letter, so I drew a “K”.

After that I suggested that we go buy better fabric and try with a real pattern. We started doing a traditional alphabet with some girly hearts on it. This project is much more challenging for S but with close supervising she managed to stitch her first heart.

I love that we can do things together the same way I used to practice different crafts at home with my mother. She hasn’t stopped sewing either. These doll’s clothes were only some of the goodies the kid’s received by the post the other day (well, the socks were actually received earlier, but still knitted by my mother):