How to Teach Children Embroidery

Young embroiderers can have fun with simple folk-art designs.

Children are most likely to be interested in embroidery if they see the adults in their lives making pretty things even more beautiful for use around the house. You can respond to that interest at a level that's appropriate to the little crafter's age and dexterity, and call on higher skills as fine-motor control develops. Ready-made products have been around for generations, but developments for other crafters offer opportunities to make your own kits and projects that may give young embroiderers an even greater sense of accomplishment and pride.

Things You'll Need

• Craft foam sheets
• Scissors
• Hole punch
• Shoelaces
• Plain, coarse muslin
• Fabric marker pen
• Embroidery hoop
• Yarn
• Yarn needle
• Fine-count woven gingham check
• Graph paper
• Pencil
• Embroidery floss
• Embroidery needle

Instructions

1. Outline shapes on sheets of craft foam. Use an ordinary hole punch to indicate where to "stitch" with the hard end of a shoelace. Start with simply going up and down through the holes and graduate later to marking lines for back stitch, such as to spell out the color of each sheet of foam. Arrange five or six holes around a central one and teach a child lazy daisy stitch.

2. Lay the child's favorite craft-foam works over muslin and make dots through the punched holes using fabric marking pens. Show the child how to keep the fabric taut in an embroidery hoop and thread yarn through a blunt needle to work the same stitches she practiced on the foam. Add French knots to the center of the daisy.

3. Introduce counted cross-stitch on fine-check gingham, but use an embroidery hoop to stabilize the fabric. Start with linear designs, such as folk-art figures and block alphabets; the child may understand the correspondence of chart and embroidery better if he helps you create the chart on graph paper at about the same gauge as the gingham checks. Transfer the foam patterns to the graph paper as you did with the muslin, and discuss how to fill in between the dots within the constraints of the grid.

Tips & Warnings

• As the child masters these simplified forms, look for simple cross-stitch or other projects stamped on cotton, or trace coloring books and other simple pictures using markers that will wash out after stitching.

• Plastic canvas may also be useful in teaching cross-stitch, but the principle and product are a bit different and the child will not develop the natural dexterity of running the needle through the fabric, down and back up in one step.