Grandchildren Sewing

My three grandchildren, and their parents, are visiting for 10 days. The kids always want to do a sewing project or two with grandma. So I thought a quick project would be machine embroidery on a "blank", something they put a design on and it's finished. My blanks are from All About Blanks, a great source for neat items!

I had some blank, cute kitchen towels they could stitch on and give to their Mom. Kids always like to make gifts for their parents. And they like sewing...they especially like watching the embroidery machine stitch away on the design they've chosen. Admittedly, my machine is old technology, and that's okay. It still works and it's enough for what I want to do. My old technology consists of embroidery cards that you stick in the machine and select the design, size, etc. from that card. So I let the kids each go through my collection of cards and pick a design.

They loved choosing the thread colors from my new thread rack on the wall...so many colors to chose from!!

Then one by one, we stitched the designs onto their chosen towels. After stitching, they trimmed away loose threads, removed the stabilizer and pressed the towel so it would look pretty for their Mom. Here are two of my wonderful grandchildren at the machine.

So what did they learn?
They learned to thread the machine correctly, set the tension disks when threading, keep their fingers away from the stitching area ("The machine doesn't know the difference between fabric and a finger."), matching a color to the color band on the towel, what type of thread is good for machine embroidery on a cotton towel, that machine embroidery needs some sort of stabilizer, and most importantly, sewing and stitching is fun!