4th Grade Embroider Artists

When you hear the word embroidery, what do you think of?

4th grade students were asked this question. Their answers: "Grandma", "sewing", "patience", "clothing", "needle", "thread", etc. 

We often don't think of embroidery/stitching as something kids might not be interested in, as it is associated with those who can work on a project with patience, care, and safety, something kids are not really known for. 

However, those are exactly the things that students should be practicing. Working on hand embroidery projects not only helps in improving hand-eye coordination but also fosters the virtue of patience, and paves the way for creativity. So, our 4th grade students have embarked on an embroidery journey, and they have been exceeding expectations thus far. 

4th grade learned a little bit about the history of embroidery. They learned about current embroidery artists like Hillary Fayle who embroiders on leaves:

 

and Richard Saja who embroiders over old fabrics:

To begin the process of embroidery, 4th Grade students learned how to sew the running stitch, the backstitch and the straight stich on cut up paper plates paper before taking it to our burlap fabric. This paper embroidery acted as their practice piece.

Front

Back

Front

Now, students are in the process of creating their final embroidery art piece on burlap fabric. They created and drew their own design on burlap fabric with chalk. They stitched a boarder around their design to keep the fabric from fraying. They are currently choosing which stitches they would like to use for each piece of their design. Some have chosen the running stitch, some the backstitch, and some the straight stitch, but many are using a combination of all the stitches for their embroidery. The last step will be learning the satin stitch to fill in any areas with colored yarn. Some embroidery process photos can be seen below.