Sewing is a valuable skill slowly becoming obsolete among the younger generations. While fast fashion is convenient and affordable, teaching children how to sew will help them recognize the value of quality clothing. The good news is that millennial parents are starting to realize the importance of teaching practical skills like sewing to their children.
Making clothes for your children is also extra special for parents as this is a pure expression of your love for them. Additionally, influencing your children to learn sewing is a beautiful bonding moment and will help them develop numerous skills over time.
Inspire creativity
It is a well-known fact that creativity and imagination go hand in hand. So instead of deciding on the garment or fabric colour yourself, you can ask your child to suggest what they want to sew with you. They can show their creativity by selecting fabric colours, prints, and designs. Allow them to check out fabrics from online catalogues such as dalstonmillfabrics.co.uk, and you can learn about their tastes and sense of style. When your child chooses something like Walt Disney fabrics for their garments, this gives insight into their interests, hobbies, and current favourites.
Master communication and following instructions
Children need adults to help them learn how to sew. They need grownups to teach them and explain all there is to know about sewing. If you decide to teach your child how to do so, they might not pay attention at first and try to sew their own way. Naturally, doing it their way won’t work, which will lead them to start listening to your instructions. To reduce the risk of failure, they will follow your tips to the letter, which they will eventually apply in their daily lives, not just when it’s time to practice their sewing skills.
If your children have a hard time understanding your instructions, they will try to express themselves as best as possible. As a result, they will start working on their communication skills by expressing themselves more eloquently. This quality will benefit your daily lives because they will begin to communicate with clarity in mind.
Teach the value of undoing mistakes
Getting infuriated over simple mistakes can leave them feeling guilty and unmotivated to learn and develop their sewing skills. Mistakes are bound to happen. It might even be the reason the seam ripper was invented. Instead of scolding your children, teach them how to undo their mistakes. This lesson is just as crucial as teaching them how to sew. Even master tailors make mistakes, and that’s natural and perfectly okay. If your child is struggling in learning specific sewing skills, it’s an excellent opportunity to teach them problem-solving skills. At the same time, some mistakes cannot be undone, with instances prompting you to start over. Teach them that mistakes are a natural part of life; hence should be perceived as a learning opportunity.
Establish excellence and accomplishment
When you complete a sewing project with your child assisting you throughout the process, they will experience a sense of accomplishment for a job well done. While sewing, you can start teaching them simple stitching techniques before advancing into more technical and complicated skills. When they learn by themselves and accomplish the work well, children become more motivated to learn sewing over time.
Develop planning and preparation skills
Whether you are making a simple shirt or a jumper for your children, you will need to perform planning and preparation to ensure a seamless sewing experience. You can encourage them to come up with their sewing projects and guide them through the basic steps such as making simple patterns, purchasing the suitable fabric, and the amount of fabric needed for their project.
Reinforce responsibility and independence
A missing button or loose seams will never cause concern for individuals who learned how to sew in their youth. Apart from the feeling of accomplishment, you can teach your children while growing up how to deal with wardrobe emergencies by teaching them how to sew. Before flying off your nest, you can help them solve fundamental problems, from basic stitches and mending a seam to fixing a hem. By showing them the fundamentals of sewing, your children become responsible adults, teaching them the necessity to repair their clothes or even inspiring them to pick a career related to sewing, such as fashion design.
Develop hand-eye coordination
Certain sewing activities, such as threading a needle, knotting a thread, and stitching a needle through the fabric, require good hand-eye coordination. Additionally, If you teach your kids how to make their clothes using a machine, they enhance their dexterity and improve their handiwork over time.
Instil the virtue of patience
Children typically do not have a lot of patience. This is especially true when they want something; they want to get it right away. For children, waiting is an incomprehensible and unacceptable concept. As a parent, you can quickly get frustrated, repeatedly explaining that they can’t get what they want immediately. However, if they learn the virtue of patience from their actions, they will eventually understand that waiting is necessary in some cases.
Sewing will help them learn the value of patience effectively. For instance, if they realise that they can’t sew before threading the needle or cannot cut fabric before measuring and marking it, they will slowly start learning the importance of practising patience.
Final thoughts
Sewing is inarguably a great hobby for children because it will help them learn valuable skills, such as creating unique items, fixing broken ones, or jazzing up their clothes. Additionally, it will teach them positive values, including confidence, patience, creativity, and many more. Choosing to impart your sewing knowledge and skills to your children will take time. You need to invest time, resources, and a whole lot of patience before they can start creating refined and polished clothes. As a parent, seeing their plan and making their clothes at a very young age will be a rewarding experience for you and your children.
