Teach Me to Crochet

Leisure Arts *COOL STUFF*
Teach Me To Crochet

This is the book that the girls and I are using to learn to crochet. Miss J and I made crochet flowers and a crochet scrunchy yesterday. The book progresses in difficulty from quick and easy projects like a chain to the final project of a lap blanket. All of the projects are things that young ladies would want to crochet. It is a full colored book with pictures of all the steps for both right handed and left handed kids.

Some of the projects include: crochet flowers, hair scrunchy, spiral coaster, round pillow, ruffled hair scrunchie, curlicue key chain, floppy hat and scarf, dog's toy ball, cat's toy fish, cotton dishcloth, and ripple lap warmer.

Watercolor Pencils

If you need to get your kids excited about drawing and coloring their nature journals, get a set of these. They are a nice pencil color, but when you go over the colored picture with a wet paint brush the picture is transformed into a beautiful water color. My oldest daughter used them most recently on her Fashion Design Storyboard and now wants to use them for everything. I got my set at Michael's and they were pretty pricey (about $10 for a set of 12). If you are looking, you might want to wait for a coupon.

Mrs. P

A Pillow Case Dress

Want to teach your littlest girls to sew? Have them make a pillowcase dress!

Miss J made this pillowcase dress for the County 4-H Fashion Show. She had a great time sewing it and is so proud that she wants to wear it on Easter Sunday. Instead of buying a pillowcase, I purchased the fabric at my local Wal-Mart for $2 a yard. I then made a pillowcase and she followed the directions from there. After I had the pillowcase made, it took about an hour for her to sew. Here are basic directions for a pillowcase dress. Instead of using elastic, I just had her sew a casing and she then threaded long pieces of ribbon through. This was pretty easy to do, but the ribbon comes out easily so you may prefer to use the elastic as in the tutorial. Here is another tutorial starting with fabric instead of a pillowcase. Miss J is 6 years old and she sewed hers on the sewing machine. In order to make that work, I put the presser foot on a huge stack of books until she could easily reach it. Also, my sewing machine is a Bernina 180 and is able to sew r-e-a-l-l-y slow. I helped her guide the fabric through so the stitches came out reasonably straight. This had just enough sewing for her to remain interested, yet feel very fulfilled to have a completed project in such a short time.

Happy Sewing,
Mrs. P

Learning to Crochet

Miss J learned to crochet at a recent 4-H workshop. She can now make crochet chains with the best of them and can't wait for read aloud time to work on her newly acquired skill.

Colonial Redwork Patterns

Here is a link to patterns for redwork that tell the story of Colonial America. If you have young ladies that like to sew, redwork is a great project. This quilt would look very nice in my bedroom. Maybe I can get some time to sew myself one.

Here is another link with a description of each quilt block.