Children are inquisitive, curious and ready to learn new things. It is best to educate them about different skills as soon as they are willing to learn. We all have some hobbies in our lives that keep us engage for a considerable amount of time. It has definitely an influence on the people around us. In this regard, children are most likely to get attracted to our hobbies, engagements and other stuff that happens quite often in our daily routine.
Sewing skills are easy to teach and can be a fun experience. Teaching your child about sewing skills can prove to be constructive and productive enhancement in the future as well. This can be the source of acquiring further techniques and skills in the child’s later life. Apart from that, it is quite natural to teach your child about different things in early stages that you have already acquired.
There are some guidelines to teach your child about sewing machine. In order to develop your child’s expertise and learning about sewing skills, these tips should be implemented effectively to make practical advancements in the process.
Following are the guidelines for teaching your child about sewing machine:
1. Build Your Child’s Confidence
You are supposed to make sure that the confidence of your child is good enough to take up any task. The confidence of your child is of vital importance as it can encourage or discourage your child completely. It all depends on your perspective. You should never bother yourself with the fact that your child is too young. It all depends on their interest level in the activity. If your child shows some interest in sewing, then you should definitely motivate your child to proceed.
2. Make Him Comfortable
Always allow your child to be around you when you are engaged in some sewing work. Let the child observe the sewing machine and allow him to analyze its functioning.
3. Choose the Right Sewing Machine
Most of the people are likely to get a toy machine for their kids in the beginning. You should not make this mistake. Always make the right decision in getting the appropriate sewing machine. Allow your child to touch the original things. It is because your child’s first time experience with sewing machine is crucial to his whole learning process and acquiring the skills.
Educate your child about the basics of sewing machine i.e. how to thread the sewing machine, how to change the sewing needle, how to change the stitches and wind a bobbin etc.
4. Free Sewing
It is a great idea to let the children sew freely. It is the best strategy in the beginning to make your child acquainted with the machine. It also improves their comfortability with the sewing machine. At first, the children can find it difficult to learn the basics even, therefore free sewing can prove to be the source of betterment in this regard.
5. Select the Right Initial Project
It is always recommended for you to start with simple projects in the interest of your child’s learning. Starting with advanced patterns or complex things can ruin the whole interest of your child in learning sewing skills. Moreover, you are advised to avoid silky fabrics as they can be stretchy until your child gets totally comfortable with it.
You should choose different and simple patterns for your child to practice and master them. The selected patterns must have clearly written guidelines that should be explained to your child explicitly.
6. Make Them Practice
It is said that you can achieve perfection through practice. Whatever you want to teach your child, just make sure it is well practiced. You should repeat every project and steps in the sewing process of your child. The simple projects that you teach your child should be practiced repeatedly until they learn them adequately.
If you notice your child struggle with certain level or skill, then try to avail such projects that include that skill. In this way they will get a chance to practice it frequently and eventually they will master it with their continuous practice.
7. Avoid Hastiness
There is no need to make your child learn the sewing skills swiftly. You are supposed to be patient and determined if you want your child’s learning everlasting.
8. Do not Anticipate Perfection
Every learning process goes through a series of failures and then gradually improvement takes place. Your aim should not be targeted at the perfection of your child’s sewing level rather it should always be focused on bringing the best of your child into practice.
9. Positive Reinforcements
Whenever they make improvements in their sewing process always appreciate them and encourage them to polish themselves further. Be it the slightest advancement but your positive attitude can bring the best outcome. At the end of each lesson and practice session, you should try to provide some candies or rewards just to make them feel better about their daily accomplishments. It can be a great idea in this regard particularly.
10. Make the Adjustments Accordingly
You are supposed to make your adjustments in a way that ensures your child’s safety and a friendly environment. For instance, there are a number of things that you should keep in mind to avoid the possibilities of accidents. These things along with suitable recommendations are as follows:
- Scissors can be dangerous at times. Therefore, it is advised generally to have lightweighted scissors for your child. They can be easily handled by kids if they are light in weight.
- Instead of regular pins, quilting pins should be used as they are longer in length and suitable for kids to work with. Besides, you can easily spot them if they get dropped or scattered around.
- In order to mark the seam allowance lines on sewing machine, you are advised to take markers, magnet and tape into account.
- A needle or finger guard is always great to have for young kids.
11. Trust Your Child
Excessive care and supervision is also harmful in various ways. You should keep faith in your child and trust in his skills. If you are indulging in every step and every moment, your child will not feel the freedom to improvise his own unique skills. It will be depleted before it even rises.
If you will trust your child, then it can surely provide them the source of motivation to accomplish on their own. You should allow them to work with various patterns and stitches. This will improve their self-expression as well.
12. Make it Easy
Your main goal is not only to introduce your child to the world of sewing, rather your ultimate goal is to make the things easy so that they can be learnt easily. Learning sewing can be frustrating at times, especially with kids. Therefore, to keep the level of child’s interest up to mark, you are advised to make the steps easier according to the situation.
13. Be open to mistakes
The only way to learn any skill is to practice it over and over again. During this practicing stage, any learner particularly children are likely to commit plenty of mistakes. However, this is the only way to learn and to experience it by themselves. Ultimately they will accomplish the skill through a series of mistakes and rigorous practicing.
14. The Child’s Level
The level of expertise improves with the passage of time and rigorous training. You are supposed to analyze your child’s level of sewing skills and then formulate your teaching strategy accordingly.
15. Encourage Your Child’s Uniqueness
Always strive to bring the inner unique qualities of your child in to light. Be it the sewing skills or any other talent, never discard and discourage the new experiments of your child. Listen to their ideas regardless of their stupidity. Sooner or later, they will nourish their creative faculty and can contribute in their own unique style. The same is recommended in the case of building your sewing skills too. This principle applies everywhere, in every domain regardless of its context.
Conclusion
Children are eager to learn different thing even in their early stages. Hence, there is no specific age limit or duration to learn, you should always strive to teach your child different skills according to their abilities and comfort level. You can easily teach your children sewing skills or any other skill if they are interested in them. Gradually and patiently, allow your child to have experience and improve their unique approaches.
The above mentioned guidelines are highly recommended for those people who want to teach their kids to use sewing machine in enhancing their sewing skills. All they need to do is to ensure the basic facilities in a friendly environment and implement the above discussed instructions efficiently. In this way, apart from learning, it can be a fun experience as well.