All images courtesy Mr.Google

I was pretty young (7 years) when I had been to my Sarla Bua’s home in Delhi during summer vacations. One of my frock was new but it was pretty loose from armpits side. She noticed and pinched the cloth from my shoulders upper side and than gave it a little hand stitch inner side from thread n needle. I wore that frock very comfortably that time and later she sewed that on her stitch machine. 

Several decades later still I follow that trick to control armpit loose in my kurtas or blouses. Things we learn in our childhood are very memorable and quite helpful later at the time of emergency. 

That is why I keep teaching small stitching secrets to my both kids so that in any kind of clothes malfunctioning they can help themself immediately. Especially it is ver useful if you have plans to send them away from home for higher education or boarding schools even. 

Here are few basic points which we can teach our kids about stitching.

1- Managing a Stitching box – Keeping one big and one small needle, few essential thread rolls like black, white, red, grey, brown, purple and yellow, titch buttons, small cello tape,few safety pins, chalk and hole buttons alongwith a small scissors. 

2- Body measurements – Teaching your kids about waist sizes, length, shoulders and chest is very useful. It can help them in early age to know that how they are growing up and how much clothes changes they are going through. They can select their own size clothes in market easily and it will reduce your stress too. 

3- Basic Hand stitching – How to put thread in needle and do basic repairing is one of the best thing. Do try to teach t how to stitch a button too. I is very easy to teach but I have seen people in big mess if they have no idea to how to do it. 

4- Basic Machine stitching – If your kid knows well that how to handle a basic stitching on machine he or she can save a lot of time and money by not getting stressed about certain things later. Do you know several Asians are damn good in this since their childhood. It is actually very helpful in quick alteration or repairing. 

5- Basic alteration in new clothes – How to increase length by putting laces or how to decrease length by cutting and light stitching is one of the best thing kids can learn from you. Other things are repairing the clothing seams and covering the minor visible torn by same color thread (rafoo). Sometimes they can mend the cloth by simple safety pin also. From 6 to 12-14 years kids can learn all these things very easily. 

Take one step at a time and let them learn this basic survival but creative thing. One of my friend’s son is in hostel. When his under garments started matching with others being same brand what he did was amazing. He went to his local guardian home and put few red thread sewing machine lines on each under garment.

 Kids can do wonders but problem is that we are less active and feel that “aajkal kaun seekhta hai?”. Being parents we can pass on so many things to them.