Children's A&S - embroidery
I taught Grace embroidery yesterday. She did really well. James the Mercer gave me a project idea. http://thatartistwoman.blogspot.com/2008/08/how-to-do-embroidery-with-kids.html
I used cotton muslin. Grace wanted a flower and butterfly. She almost made it through the flower. I let her choose her own colours. She got better as she went. Of course, it is hard for her to not press on the cloth and screw up the tension and it take her 5 times as long to make a stitch as it takes me. She tended to reply on me to help her hold her hoop. But for a first attempt at 6 years old she did really well.
The downside is that she broke my needle threader than Marina gave to me in that kit from Practicum. I was getting her project started in the sense of putting it in the hoop and starting with a knot and she couldn't sit still. She picked it up to fiddle with it and broke the wire. So, I'm back to the needle threader that Marina hated until I can get a replacement. (huge sigh) We had another conversation about not touching things that don't belong to you because you don't know what is breakable, what is expensive, and what could hurt you.
She learned that her stitch's name was backstitich. It came up that there were many other stitches. I had to tell her that even I don't know them all. I ended up describing Marina to her as my embroidery teacher. Now she wants to meet Marina next time we see her at an event and she wants to bring her little project to show her.
In November, I'm going to do cooking. I might do medieval gingerbread if I can find a recipe. I'm going to invite some of Grace's non-SCA friends. What I learned yesterday was the importance of keeping things short and focused. Because it was just Grace and I and she wanted to try to finish the flower, I let her work on it between 2:00 and 4:15. But the longer it went on, the grouchier she became and she made mistakes and then got mad about it. The moral of the story is that Children's A&S should be 2:00-3:30. If people want to hang around a bit and play that is one thing. Kids can't concentrate on anything for more than 90 minutes and sometimes not even that. No matter how unfinished projects are - 90 minutes tops.
I used cotton muslin. Grace wanted a flower and butterfly. She almost made it through the flower. I let her choose her own colours. She got better as she went. Of course, it is hard for her to not press on the cloth and screw up the tension and it take her 5 times as long to make a stitch as it takes me. She tended to reply on me to help her hold her hoop. But for a first attempt at 6 years old she did really well.
The downside is that she broke my needle threader than Marina gave to me in that kit from Practicum. I was getting her project started in the sense of putting it in the hoop and starting with a knot and she couldn't sit still. She picked it up to fiddle with it and broke the wire. So, I'm back to the needle threader that Marina hated until I can get a replacement. (huge sigh) We had another conversation about not touching things that don't belong to you because you don't know what is breakable, what is expensive, and what could hurt you.
She learned that her stitch's name was backstitich. It came up that there were many other stitches. I had to tell her that even I don't know them all. I ended up describing Marina to her as my embroidery teacher. Now she wants to meet Marina next time we see her at an event and she wants to bring her little project to show her.
In November, I'm going to do cooking. I might do medieval gingerbread if I can find a recipe. I'm going to invite some of Grace's non-SCA friends. What I learned yesterday was the importance of keeping things short and focused. Because it was just Grace and I and she wanted to try to finish the flower, I let her work on it between 2:00 and 4:15. But the longer it went on, the grouchier she became and she made mistakes and then got mad about it. The moral of the story is that Children's A&S should be 2:00-3:30. If people want to hang around a bit and play that is one thing. Kids can't concentrate on anything for more than 90 minutes and sometimes not even that. No matter how unfinished projects are - 90 minutes tops.