Homeschool Connection: Little Hands Making A Sewing Basket

A few months ago we purchased a sewing machine. I use to sew before starting a family, but then I found myself not having the time to sew. I thought because I'm homeschooling my children, why not teach them a great skill to take with them into their adult years. Click here to see our new sewing machine.

We started off with some cool projects, keepers so to speak. My children have been enjoying themselves as much as I have. It really is a lot of fun watching little hands working a sewing machine.

A few months ago I responded to post from Heather over at "Upside down Homeschooling." In February I wrote about teaching our children how to sew and you can read about that by clicking here. Then in March I wrote about a project we're currently working called, "Quilted Memories" and that is located here.

Below is what we worked on the other day because they wanted to sew instead of doing their work. However, I made a deal with them, if they do half of their assignments, we'll sew a project and come back to the other half of their assignments. This went very well as you tell below.

We decided to make a sewing basket to put our smaller items in for sewing. I thought it turned out very well for being a last minute project. We had a team thing going on here and it worked out great. This way everyone was giving a chance to do a part of the project.

My 10 year old was in charge the design of the basket. My 7 year old picked the fabric as well as my 10 year old. They both were also in charge of cutting the fabric as well. Then my 5 year old was in charge of transportation. He had to take the fabric that had been cut over to be traced. I was in charge of this area by tracing the outline of the fabric onto the batting. Then my 5 year old would transport the batting pieces over to my 6 year. She would then pin each piece together evenly with the two, fabric and batting.

I had them each take a turn in sewing each piece of the fabric around the pattern. During this process, I then taught them how to turn corners without having to cut off. After this last step, I jumped into assemble the pieces together.

This is our sewing basket and still has plenty of room for more. The side however are not as stiff as it should be, but still serves the purpose. We then put in our squares for our "Quilted Memories."