The art challenge for the 19th week of Documented Life Project was stitching.

Jan:
For this challenge, I pulled out a box of small fabric scraps and picked out pieces that were small enough to not need cutting. I arranged them on a piece of fusible bond on top of a piece of interfacing . When I liked the arrangement, I used an iron over the whole piece to bond the fabric pieces to the interfacing. Of course there were pieces overlapping that were not touching the fusible bond, so I cut tiny pieces of the fusible bond and placed them under the overlapping fabrics and ironed them. I was not concerned with trying to stick down every edge, but wanted to make sure the fabric pieces stayed in place while I stitched. The I “doodled” with embroidery floss making random stitches over the whole piece.

Melinda:
I didn’t have any sewing stuff with me while I worked on this page, so I decided to draw some cross stitch. One of my favorite shows is Doctor Who, so I drew the Eleventh Doctor and wrote out some of his lines from different episodes.

For the kids, I asked them to draw a simple picture on cardstock and then let them punch holes in the paper along their drawing lines for their stitching holes.

Then they each got to pick out embroidery thread which I threaded on a blunted needle, showed them how to sew and they did the rest. They were so proud of their creations.

My Princess:

Ninja Boy:

Miss Tickles:

You don’t need to purchase fancy “sewing cards” to teach your kids how to sew. The grandkids were more excited to be sewing on their own drawings than they would have on something pre-made.