“Lissie my love,” said her mother. Her gentle voice sounded tired. “Look at this apron you sewed. I’ve had to rip out the hem on it again. It’s supposed to be 20 stitches to the inch, Lissie. And in a line. Yours fly all over. Your sister Nan sews more carefully, and she is but six years old.”
When I opened the first Felicity book to check on some vocabulary, this is the first paragraph I noticed. And I immediately thought- lesson!
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| R10 tries to make her stitches tiny |
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| This was R's assignment- she had to draw a one inch line and try to draw 20 stitches along it. Then for some multiplication practice she had determine how many stitches Felicity would make in a 24 inch hem at 20 stitches per inch. Finally, I had her try it! |
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| Here are the results! On the left is her hand sewn bag. Her first inch was more like 11 stitches, then she was able to tighten it up to 26 after that. We also decided to compare what the sewing machine would do with a standard stitch setting. 11 stitches to the inch. Priceless lessons all around on this day. |
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| In the end, she had made two new sachet bags with the leftover potpourri from co-op (that she and sewing pal Betsy had ground together on a sewing day) Hey- I think I still need to blog about that... |
It is amazing to me how much sewing we can squeeze into R10's daily lessons and how well she responds to it. Not only did we get to do some great applied math, but this has really improved her hand sewing skills as well! This is also a great lesson in just allowing time for opportunities to arise in your school day. Too much scheduled in doesn't leave the margin for these teachable moments in our day that are far better than the ones we had planned!
1 comment:
I have got to get back to sewing. Haven't sewn anything in about two years except for hand stitching a quilt. Love your blog. Read it every week. I have a giveaway this week that you might be interested in. Come by and take a peek.
Blessings
Diane
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