Easily Teach Running Stitch To Children Free Story Lesson #3

Would you believe that it’s easy to teach the running stitch to your children?

As Charlotte Mason inspired homeschoolers, you get to be with our children every day, you get to see them learn new things, you get to see them be fed with a rich feast you are giving them every day. Now there’s an easy to give them the gift of creativity through handicrafts! To be specific with hand sewing handicrafts.

We are learning hand sewing because it can include ages 3 and older so that the whole family can sew together, and because of the great ability to be creative with it.

Your children can make:

• Curtains

• Pillow cases

• Dolls

• Doll clothing/costumes

• Toys

• Clothing

• Costumes

• Sour dough bread bags

• Nature study aprons

• and so much more.

As with written language, learn the basics, and then their is no limit to the stories, speeches, and poems that can be written. This also works with hand sewing!

Today we are working on a sewing sampler to learn all the basics stitches. Today we are learning the running stitch, used for hems.

Read the story of the Wetherwind family as their granny teaches them the basics of hand sewing. It is short and sweet and comes with a tutorial to complete the lesson.

Read the following story where you will learn how to sew the running stitch and see if this will be just the thing you are looking for for your children’s handicraft education.

Easily Teach Running Stitch To Children

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Introduction To The Wetherwind Family

The Wetherwind family is a homeschooling family of 8.

The list of characters are:

• Mother, a loving homeschooling mom of 6 children
• Father, an architect who works from home and who loves his family dearly
• Granny, a spunky lady with lots of handicrafty knowledge and who loves teaches her grandchildren
• Grandpa, who has come to have fun with the family in-between sewing times
• Abigail the oldest child, age 14, and only daughter, she bares it the best she can, just kidding she loves her brothers, though still wishes for a sister
• Adam, age 12, lover of everything that means he can run
• Joseph, age 9, loves to run and play with Adam, but can enjoy sitting too
• Benson, age, 7, warrior, wiggler, and lover of crafts
• Oscar, age 4, loves to copy his siblings, and is more calm than any of his brothers
• Edmond, age 2, tiny sweet boy, who is curious to a fault

Granny and grandpa have come over for a visit so that granny could teach the children and mother how to hand sew. The beginning stitches are being learned and practiced on a 5 by 8 pieces of white aida cloth otherwise known as a sampler.

Now on with the next lesson!

Easily Teach Running Stitch To Children

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Run To Learn The Running Stitch

It was Saturday the day after the Wetherwind family had started their hand sewing lesson from their granny.

It was a beautiful spring day outside. The whole family was there enjoying the gentle sun on their skin. Granny, grandpa, mother and father and Abigail were sitting on the out door couch while the children played. Tiny Edmond was proving how big he is by climbing up a small log and jumping off of it. Oscar was doing the same thing only on a bigger log since he was a big boy of 4.

Benson, Joseph, and Adam were showing their grandparetns their newly develope running and sports skills.

They ran back and forth trying to stop on a dime. Balls were kicked in all sorts of fancy ways that the boys could think. At last they came to rest on the couch.

“You boys are quite the runners.” observed grandpa.

“Yep.” said Benson, not at all aware of what modesty looks like.

“We are faster than the last time you came.” said Joseph.

“But I am still the fasted.” said Adam, who also didn’t know what modesty was.

“You do have the longest legs son,” replied father, “Just you wait until your brothers catch up with you, you may be the slowest one among them, even tiny Edmond may be faster than you someday!”

Easily Teach Running Stitch To Children

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From Running To Running Stitch

Edmond, looked up when he heard his name and said, “Fast!”

Everyone laughed and told him how cute he is. Which of course he already knew.

“I’m fast too!” said Oscar.

“Let’s see.” answered granny.

Off Oscar went like a 4 year old rocket. When he came back the proper oohs and aahs were given and assurance that he was cute too.

“Speaking of all this running” said granny, are you ready for me to teach you the running stitch yet?” asked granny.

There was excitement from everyone. Mother suggested sewing outside which was a popular idea so everyone went inside the house to grab their things.

So far Oscar had learned to sew on his “very special sewing cards” and was having a great time. Benson was doing his special kind of 7 year old big boy kind of practicing on burlap on a embroidery hoop. He was going up and down, any way he wanted to , and was getting a good feeling for how it feels to sew.

Joseph, Adam, Abigail, and their mother, (despite the occasional “help” Edmond) were ready to learn their third stitch. The first one was even baste, then uneven baste, which are practically the same thing with just a subtle difference. Both are used to hold the two pieces of fabric in place so that you can sew nice even, un messy hems.

Easily Teach Running Stitch To Children

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Uses For Running Stitch

“The running stitch has been around for thousands of years!”

“Wow.” said Benson in an awed voice.

His older siblings laughed at him, but granny said, “Benson is right children. You are not understanding how awe inspiring it is.”

The children looked down. Granny continued.

“Just think…..The running stitch has been around for thousands of years because no one has been able to think of a stitch that would work better! Quite something isn’t? How many things have been improved drastically over the years but the running stitch hasn’t?”

A conversation of what things have been improved like, ovens, washing machines, lawn mowers, etc.

The lesson continued.

“What is it used for?” asked Adam.

“There are many uses the three most common ones are

• Hems
• Attaching small fabric to larger fabric
• To make gathers

“That’s very useful” said mother. Abigail agreed.

Easily Teach Running Stitch To Children

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Running Stitches Are Not So Hard

“Write “running stitch” down here. That’s Okay Adam. Just rewrite “running stitch”. That’s it. Now draw a line with your ruler like so. Start the same way as you normally do, thread and knot. Yes that’s it. You are getting so much better at it! Benson, I can help you…Abigail would help Joseph? Now you can come up from underneath, don’t pull very far, now start running like you boys did today.” Granny starting going up and down many times without pulling the needle all the way through. When her needle ran out of room she pulled it until the thread ran out of space.

“Oh that looks like fun!” said Benson excitedly. I’m going to try it! He did a pretty good job of it too!

“Ouch” was heard a few moments later.

“A poked finger is to be exspected.” said granny.

Oscar was happily sewing his cards until he decided to go play with father and grandpa in the sand box. Edmond wanted to go to.

“So the stitches need to be even?” asked Abigail?

“That’s right.” said granny. “It much easier to make the stiches even on aida cloth. When we move on to regular fabric, it will be more tricky to make them even, but they don’t need to be perfect.”

“This one is my favorite stitch so far.” said mother.

It was agreed by everyone.

A few more poked fingers happened but granny assured them that they would quickly learn to keep their fingers out of the needles way!

Easily Teach Running Stitch To Children

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All Done! Another Stitch?

Benson felt the pull of the sand box, and put his sewing down.

“That’s not where your sewing goes” reminded mother.

So it was put away and he joining his younger siblings.

The rest continued until they were done with the row.

“Can we do more?” asked Abigail?

Mother said, “Not today dear. Granny and grandpa are going to help us build more grow boxes.”

The wish to help was said by all and so the grow boxes were built with everyone doing something to help, though it was a little tricky.

And so there we leave them until the next hand sewing lesson.

The End For Now

Wrapping up

You are one step closer to learning the skills you need for your children to run wild with their creativity. After all, Shakespeare had to learn his ABC’s before he could let his creativity flourish, and so it is with hand sewing. Learn these easy lessons and before you know your home will be full of self-driven, excited children creating many wonderful things.

Learn the even baste stitch here.

Learn the uneven baste stitch here.

Goodbye for now!