Quilting Skills for Kids

October 7, 6:03 PMQuilting ExaminerKelly Smith

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October is National Communicate with Your Kid Month

This week I’m presenting some ways to communicate your love of quilting to your children.

Some quilt shops offer classes where an adult can bring a child along. This is a great way to show your child your love of quilting and get them involved in the local quilting community. With luck they will make friends their own age who they can share their newfound hobby with. But if you can’t find a shop that allows kids in their classes, teach them at home.

The fundamentals of careful cutting and piecing are the vital foundational steps to becoming a good quilter and they are best taught one on one. If you let your child use your rotary cutter, make sure they wear a safety glove on the non-cutting hand and don’t take your eyes off them for a second. There are cut-resistant gloves called Klutz Gloves that make cutting safer, but keep in mind that they are not cut proof, just cut resistant, so you still have to take care when using one. You can buy them from Fons & Porter.

When machine sewing, many young children can’t get the hang of steering the fabric and operating the foot pedal at the same time (or can’t reach the pedal at all!), so it might be helpful to demonstrate, then let them sit on your lap and ‘drive’ the machine while you control the speed of the needle and stay aware of where their fingers are. (Sewing through your finger is no fun and even experienced quilters have done it from time to time. I’m not naming any names!)

If your child is too young to use the machine, have them draw, paint, or appliqué the blocks and sew them together yourself. Your child can always help you “quilt” the quilt by simply tying it with yarn or sturdy thread such as perl cotton.

To tie a quilt, thread a needle with yarn or thread and make single stitches from the front, pulling the end of the thread back up to the front and tying it in a secure knot. Clip the thread about 1/2" long. Try to tie it every three inches or so.

The quilt label is another great place for kids to exercise their creativity. You can use pre-made iron-on label patterns and let the kids color them in with fabric markers or crayons, then show them how to hand sew the label to the back of the quilt. Amazon has a great selection of books with iron-on quilt labels.

If you want a more elaborate label I love the book One of a Kind Quilt Labels. It has a nice assortment of creative pieced labels to really personalize your quilt.

Sharing a fun activity is a great way to get closer to your kids, and who knows – you might develop a quilting buddy for life!