Teaching my daughter

I have started teaching my dauther how to sew and thought I would share some of the patterns that we have used. I'm sure there are others out there trying to teach a child how to sew and could use some simple ideas to help.

We started with a simple skirt.

Materails:

elastic

fabric

measuring tape

To make this skirt, buy 2x the length you need. For example, if you want the skirt to be 12 inches long you would buy 2/3 of a yard.

Measure the wearer's waste and cut the elastic that length.

Sew the ends of the elastic together to make a loop.

Stretch the elastic as far as possible, That will be the width of the fabric that you will need.

For example, my daughter's waste is 22", the elastic streched 45" so I cut the fabric to 45".

Cut your fabric to size.

To attach the fabric to the elastic you can use one of two methods. First, you can either stretch the elastic while you sew it which leaves a gathered finished. As this method can be a bit difficult for new sewer's you can employ the second method; we first sewed a gathered stitch to the fabric and then pulled the material the the width we wanted.

To do a gathered stitch, sew a straight line across the top of the fabric at length four or longer. Do not backstitch. Pull the material to fit your length.

Sew fabric to the elastic

Hem the bottom and you're all done.,

We added pink heart pockets for a little bit of extra color. You can add whatever you think your skirt needs or leave it plain.

The skirt turned out great and my daughter wants to wear it everyday to show off what she accomplished. Feel free to post any questions.