My talkative, sweet, three-year-old granddaughter Cora was with me for the past week. She is flying back to Vermont today with my son Joe, and I am excited to return to the studio and begin a Swedish art weave piece. (I finished the test piece just before she arrived.)
When she first ran up the stairs in our house, she looked for her babies. “Grandma, these babies don’t have any socks. Grandma, can you get some socks for them?” Of course, grandmas can fix anything, so I cut small pieces of ribbing and sewed on some socks. She breathed audibly in concentration, peering at my hands as I used the needle.
“Can I do that too, Grandma?” So I made a “quilt” for the babies and guided her as she used a big (and sharp!) needle to sew colored threads. She picked the threads, and not unexpectedly was drawn the the shiny spools in the mix.
We talked about how she was making lines on the fabric with thread. She also wanted to add beads, and I was impressed at her hand-eye coordination in finding the holes of the tiny beads to put on to the needle.
Cora is gone now; we’ll add more beads and thread on her next visit. The sewing experiment was a hit, but it couldn’t compare to the new Thomas the Tank Engine play hut.
lovely!