Hi, I'm Nicholeen Peck, and I teach parenting
good communication and child development all over the world and in this video, we are going to be
talking about how to teach a child to sew by hand. So in this video, we're going to talk about why
it's important to teach your child to sew by hand, and then some simple things that you can do
to get them hand sewing. So I'm known all over the world for teaching parents how to teach
their children skills and principles of self government. Like thes
e books right here, teach
children the four basic skills of self government, which are following instructions, accepting no
answers and criticism, accepting consequences and disagreeing appropriately. And I really think
that it's important to teach children all adult skills. So those four basic skills are adult
skills that everybody needs to know to learn how to communicate well, and not take things
personally and be calm. And to get their point across in a good way. There are a lot of othe
r
adult skills too, that our children need to know. And sewing is one of those. I remember my mother,
sitting me and my brothers down separately, and sometimes together and teaching us how to
sew, how to sew on buttons, how to make a seam, I definitely did a lot more sewing on the machine.
But even my brothers learned how to machine so as well as hand. So they also learned how to cook.
I learned how to fix things, how to mow lawns, how to do all the other things that you know, the
boys wer
e probably more interested in mom and dad and our family made sure that we all had a breadth
of knowledge so that we were ready for adult life. So then I remember when I went off to school and
my brothers went out of the house, I remember that we would always take a little sewing kit with us
so that we could sew something up. And I was so glad that I did because when I was at college, I
remember pulling out my sewing kit and fixing a little hem on my outfit because I didn't have my
sewing m
achine or anything like that with me. But because I had a basic knowledge, then I could do
something with it, just like a basic knowledge of music is going to be useful, this type of thing
is going to be useful to just for regular self care. So let me show you what I've got here. It
doesn't take a ton of supplies. But I've got a needle of course, because we got to do the sewing
and some thread, I've got two pieces of fabric, some scissors, some pins and a button. And really,
that's all you
need to teach a person to sew. So not a big expense. I mean, especially you know,
as you're just beginning. So let's look now at what we're going to do. So the very first thing
you have to do is teach your child how to thread the needle. Super important. Gotta get that little
thread through the whole of the needle. Alright, I'm gonna have to put my glasses on to make
sure that I can see it because I'm older now, I actually used to do so much sewing, I have sewn
formal dresses, I've sewn, yo
u know, all kinds of I've done a lot of quilting and everything. I've
done so many things with sewing. Okay, so when you so you don't want to leave when you do hand
sewing and you're really going to make like a seam or something, you don't want to leave a little bit
trailing off, when you do embroidery or something like that, then you're going to run it through
the needle, and then you'll leave a little bit hanging. But when you're going to do regular hand
sewing, you've got to have the end
s matching up to each other. So what I'm going to do is I'm going
to cut the ends so that they are equal. And then we are going to tie the knot. Now that's probably
the hardest part, believe it or not, is just tying the knot in the thread. My husband had this great
idea with this group of boys, he leads this group of youth at our church and he said, Honey, we got
to teach them the basics of sewing and I said, Okay, we'll teach them the basics of sewing. And
we spent half the time just tryin
g to get everyone to get the knot tied. Okay, so that tells you
and then after that we did a little bit better. But tying the first knot is tricky, and they
might have to practice at it quite a bit. So what I did and now this is I don't even know what
kind of a knot this is. But this is what my great grandmother taught me to do when she taught me
to hand sew. So may seem a little gross, but you lick your finger, and then you put the threads on
your finger. You hold them there with your thum
b. Then you take the other thread and you make a
cross on your fingers. So you cross them over each other. Let's do that again. Put them together
as one, cross them over each other. So now they're crossed on your finger. So now what you do is you
take your thumb and you just roll them together. So now I've rolled and made this very twisty type
of a string here and I take my other finger and I'm with my thumb here, and I'm going to pull it
down, and then that makes the little knot. Okay, at
the end of the string, you might have to work
on that a little bit. But that is the best way to make a good sewing knot. I know that for many of
you who normally are subscribed to this channel, you know that there is a system for just about
everything. Because I love my systems. Well, there's definitely a system for sewing. So you
want to teach your children about the fabric that there's the right side of the fabric, and there's
the wrong side of the fabric. And normally, when we're sewing
something together, it looks
prettiest if we put our two wrong sides together, doesn't it, but you have to explain to the
children. But if we put our two wrong sides together, and then we do our seam, then we're
going to have a problem because when we open it up, it's going to look like this, we don't
want it to look like this and have all of the other stuff on the outside over here. We want it
to look like this. When we put our seam together, we want the the two right sides to be together.
So what that means is you have to put your right sides together, even though it seems funny to do
that. All right, now there's two different types of seams that you could teach your children.
So there's just your basic in and out stitch, where you run it through normally, and then you
push it right back up the other way. Oop, there we go. Right back up the other way. And of
course, there's an easier way to do this, where you can just go, you know, up, down, and
you can bend the fabric, bu
t probably wouldn't teach them that just yet. You just haven't go
in and out and in and out. Okay. So that's, that's just a simple little up and down stitch,
just your regular stitching there. Okay, so then another type of a stitch that you could
use is a stitch where you wrap around the edge, it's a little bit more decorative, it's a little
bit more of a secure stitch, especially if you have some fabric where there's fraying on the
outside like this. So I have a machine that's called a ser
ger. And that machine will stitch the
straight stitch and another straight stitch, and then it will actually tip all around, we'll make
just a few more little straight stitches here, in and then out. And if you don't want it to
pull like that, like it's pulling, then what you have to do is once you make your original
stitch, you have to do a little back stitch, and then come back that way, and then it won't
pull like that. So let's now talk about this other stitch that is going to go around
the top. So what
you do is you're starting on your fabric here, and then instead of going through this way, you
are going to lock it with the edge by going around oops, find a good spot there, by going around the
edge of it this way. Now you can just pull it. So it just goes right over the edge of that you could
pull it nice and tight. If you wanted to make it really tight on the edge there, you can just see
where that stitches. Now one thing that I like to do when I teach this to children
is I'll have them
go do this roundabout stitch. And what I have them do is actually put this loop that you've made over
the top of the needle, because when you do that, then your stitches go a little bit forward, and
then they they're a little bit better as far as staying in alignment goes. So anyway, that's
what I do to teach just a straight stitch. But there are more things that a child needs to know
than just how to do a straight stitch, or to do a binding type stitch here around the ed
ge like
this. So what they need to know is also how to fix things when they break. So if we're going to if
we're going to do a hem, then what I would teach my child is how to fold it up and then how to fold
it back so that then I could do a little hemstitch That might be a little advanced for at first. But
one thing that almost everyone needs to fix is a button that comes off. That happens all the time.
You know, I just realized I had my pins lying here. Now normally I would teach a child t
o use
the pins. I didn't because I think I've done a lot of sewing in my day. And so I forgot, but I would
teach them to pin their fabric together so that it doesn't come apart when they're doing their sewing
and you could pin it down this way or this way, all the way around. But just getting those pins
in place actually helps the child so that they can work with the fabric and not have it moving
around. I'm able to maintain it without and so I forgot to do that but definitely having pins
is helpful. Okay, so So let's go ahead and sew the button on. First, let's take a quick look at
our mini seam. Okay, so the seam is only to here, so we're not going to see tons of stuff. But you
can see our little seam here is coming together quite nicely. Okay. So now what we're going to do
is we're going to tie off the same and I want to, I want to just show you how to tie off how to make
a knot once you're sewing in something. Okay, so usually, what I'll do is I'll go back a little bit
a
nd find some extra fabric like just a teeny bit, my n stitches here, I might go back to here, and
go through the fabric one more time. And now I'm going to have this loop here. Okay, in the loop,
what I'm going to do is I'm going to wrap my, my needle around the loop three times 123. And
then I'm going to pull it up, and it pulls a knot right there into the fabric. Okay, you also
could make one other little stitch, you know, just a regular little straight stitch, you could
do either kind of
stitch before you pull that into a knot. So now, I have to make another knot at
the end if I'm going to do my my button, right. So now I roll it and pull it and I've got another
knot there. And we're going to start the button. So I'm just going to pick any random spot here,
we'll say we'll put the button up here at the top. So normally, you're going to have a special place
where the button is supposed to go so that it fits into the buttonhole. But we don't have that kind
of a situation her
e. So you're going to teach the child and at first is not going to be pretty okay.
But you're going to teach them how to come up in the holes, and then go down in the holes. And you
can teach them to do a crisscross pattern like an X pattern on the top of the button, or you could
teach them to make it so that the button holes, the hole that we go, or you can teach it, you can
have them go, you know, just to little cross with the holes. So right now, that's what we've done.
And then on the b
ackside, it'll look more like an x. So it's either going to look like an X on the
front, or an X on the back. And that just depends on what type of a pattern you want on the top of
your button. So I have chosen on the top of my button to have it be just straight lines across
those button holes. Okay, so now what I'm going to do is I'm going to tie it off on the back,
just like I did before on my little seam. And I'm just going to sew a little teeny thing, a
little teeny stitch right behind
the button, I'm going to pull it and there's a loop there.
Okay, so then I circle in the loop three times 123. So now I'm going to pull it up and pull it
down. And it's going to not right there, which it not it. And so now I can cut it. Now obviously I
would so way more times on my button than that. But just to save time on the video, we've just
done only two or three stitches across each side of that button. But you'd probably want to do
probably like five or six, I would say at least just
to keep it really secure. But that is the
basics of hand sewing that you would want to start with. And then after that you can move from there.
What I did when I was little is I started sewing little things for my dolls, my little Barbie dolls
and stuffed animals and baby dolls. And it's not going to be perfect at first. In fact, it's going
to look a little rough. But let your children experiment with scraps of fabric. Let them learn
these basics. And then just really work on seeing what t
ypes of creations they can make and just
see you know, little tiny pillows for little teeny dollies sometimes bring the greatest joy, because
you just have to sew in the square, and then you stuffed them. And so the end shot and then your
dolly can use it and it seems useful, makes you feel like you're really did something. And so
those were the types of things that my mom taught me to do when I was little. Now this is a lot
of learning just for one simple thing. And this isn't the normal t
ype of thing that I teach here
on this channel. I usually teach about parenting, like I said about different adult skills and
if you want to know more about the types of things that I teach related to parenting, calm
parenting, that teach the teachers the children's self government, that I highly recommend that
you watch the class on this channel called the not so known secret for parenting success. Click
on the link to that video now. I'll see you there.
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