Needlepoint for kids

What age to start

There is no set age: go by the child's hands and patience, not the birthday. As a rough guide, from the ages that one parent, one cross stitch designer and one seller of children's kits each give:

• Before canvas: beads, laces and cardboard with holes. Threading large beads, lacing a card and sewing through holes punched in cardboard come first.
• About 3 to 5: in and out of holes. The child takes a blunt needle and yarn up through one hole of a piece of plastic canvas and down through the next, in rows of color. It is not yet a needlepoint stitch. A 3 or 4 year old needs some help, and many 5 year olds finish a piece nearly alone.
• About 5 to 7: the first tent stitches, with an adult alongside. This is the age one guide for parents gives for a first cross stitch. Tent stitch is the small slanted stitch that needlepoint is made of.
• About 7 and up: tent stitch with less help, on plastic canvas or on the canvas of a child's kit.
• Teenagers start as an adult does: see "Teenagers" below.

A small child needs bigger materials, not smaller ones: fine control of the fingers comes with age. Choose bigger holes, a bigger needle and thicker yarn than an adult would use.

What to stitch on

Plastic canvas with 7 holes to the inch is the place to start. It is a sheet of molded plastic: square holes with thin bars of plastic between them. The label gives the number of holes to the inch as the mesh or the count: the two words mean the same thing. The sheet is stiff, so it is held in the hand without a frame. It does not fray, the needle passes easily through the open grid, and a wrong stitch can be taken out without harming the plastic. The plastic canvas guide covers the other sizes and how pieces are joined.

For a child not ready for canvas, cardboard with holes is practice in going in and out. Punch a row of holes in a piece of thin cardboard with a hole punch, and let the child sew in and out of them with a blunt needle and yarn, or thread a lace through. Cardboard does not go slack as cloth does, so the child can attend to the movement alone. Lacing cards and wooden boards with holes are also sold ready-made.

Woven canvas is what needlepoint is usually stitched on: a stiff, open cloth of evenly spaced threads with holes between them. Its mesh is counted the same way, and the lower the number, the bigger the holes.

A kit is a canvas sold with its yarn and needle, and some kits for children are on 7 or 10 mesh: see "Kits for children" in the kits guide. In a kit the design is usually painted or printed on the canvas, and the child stitches each color where it is, with no chart to follow. A chart is a design drawn on a grid, one square for each stitch, to be counted onto blank canvas.

Coarser than 7 or 10 mesh canvas is rug canvas, a woven canvas with 3 to 5 holes to the inch. Needlepoint on it is called quick point, and it goes fast: another choice for a child.

Woven canvas asks more of the adult than plastic canvas does, which is why plastic canvas comes first. Blank canvas is cut with at least 2 inches (5 cm) of bare canvas beyond the design on every side, as canvas and mesh sizes explains. Its cut edges unravel and catch the yarn, so each is bound with masking tape folded over the edge. And it bends: a frame of wooden bars, which the canvas is tacked to, keeps it flat and steady. See frames and stretcher bars.

The needle and the yarn

Needlepoint uses a tapestry needle, which has a blunt tip that slips through the holes and a large eye for thick yarn. Tapestry needles are numbered backward: the smaller the number, the bigger the needle. Bigger holes take a bigger needle and thicker yarn:

Worsted weight is the ordinary medium knitting yarn: look for the number 4 or the word medium on the label. Rug yarn is bulkier. Tapestry wool is a wool yarn made for canvas, and the thread guide describes it. Where the table gives two sizes of needle, size charts overlap: a kit comes with a needle that fits, and needle sizes has a test for the fit.

• Metal or plastic. A metal tapestry needle is blunt, and it does not bend in a child's hand. Plastic needles are sold for children and work too. One guide for parents calls them the safest for children of 3 to 5, with no risk of a prick; another, on sewing with young children, says they are not always safer and can be frustrating to use.
• Short lengths. Cut the yarn 16 to 18 inches (40 to 45 cm) long. Longer yarn is in the way and tends to knot.
• Single, with a long tail. The yarn goes through the eye once and is used single, not doubled. In a child's hand the needle keeps slipping off the yarn: leave a long tail hanging from the eye, and teach the child to hold the eye between finger and thumb as each stitch is pulled through.
• Threading. It is hard for a beginner. Keep a needle threaded in each color, so the child goes on stitching. To teach it later, fold the yarn over and push the fold, not the cut end, through the eye: needle sizes describes the fold under "Threading". Or use a needle threader, a small tool that pulls the yarn through the eye, described in tools and supplies.

A first project

Choose something the child can use or give away. The ring below is made in one sitting. A bracelet, a bookmark or a coaster is bigger: expect to come back to it.

• Few colors. One to five, in large areas of one color. Lay out a few for the child to choose from: too much choice can stall a child.
• Nothing to read. Even a simple stitch diagram can confuse a child who has not met one, and a chart is one more thing to read. Plain rows and stripes need neither.
• Small. Plastic canvas is cut by counting its bars, not by measuring, and a piece needs one bar outside its stitches on every side. So a square of 10 stitches each way is cut 12 bars each way: at 7 holes to the inch that is about 1 3/4 inches (4.5 cm) across, and 100 stitches. A square of 20 stitches is cut 22 bars each way, a little over 3 inches (8 cm) across, and takes 400.

A ring for a finger suits a young child who can make the tent stitch:

1. The adult cuts a strip 3 bars wide and 16 bars long, as "What the adult does" describes below.
2. The child works one row of 14 tent stitches along the middle bar. The next section describes the stitch.
3. The child covers the two long edges with yarn, as described after these steps.
4. The strip is bent into a circle and its two short ends are sewn together with yarn, a stitch through each pair of holes.
5. The adult sews on a button as the stone, with sewing thread and a sharp sewing needle.

Covering an edge of plastic canvas with yarn is called overcasting. It is done after the stitching, with the same needle and yarn. Bring the needle up from the back through a hole at the edge, then up from the back again through the next hole along: the yarn wraps over the edge by itself. Make one stitch in each hole, and two or three at an outside corner so that the corner is covered.

A bracelet is a bigger piece in a second stitch: a strip 5 bars wide and 50 bars long, filled with 16 squares of Scotch stitch, a square of five slanted stitches that its own page shows. The edges and the join are done as for the ring.

The charts on this site are bigger than a first piece: most are 72 stitches square, which is 5,184 stitches, a long project for an older child or a teenager. The easy patterns take two to five colors each. The designs for a child's room are mostly in bright colors and plain shapes, but they are not all easy: each page gives its level.

A chart 72 stitches square does not fit the usual sheet of plastic canvas with 7 holes to the inch, 10 1/2 by 13 1/2 inches (27 by 34 cm), which takes 69 stitches by 89. A sheet 12 by 18 inches (30 by 46 cm) takes 79 by 119, so the chart fits on that one. For something smaller, the child can color a design onto graph paper, one square for each stitch, and work one tent stitch for each square, as how to read a chart explains.

The stitch

The stitch is tent stitch, made over one crossing. A crossing is where two bars of plastic canvas cross, or two threads of woven canvas. Worked in rows it is called continental stitch, and rows are the way to teach it.

1. Begin with the top row of stitches, at its right-hand end. Bring the needle up from the back through a hole one in from the end, so that there is a hole above it and to its right.
2. Take it down through the hole one row up and one hole to the right. The yarn now lies on a slant over the crossing between the two holes, from lower left to upper right.
3. Come up again through the hole just to the left of the one where the first stitch began. Go down one row up and one hole to the right, as before.
4. Continue to the end of the row. The row runs from right to left, and every stitch slants the same way.

A second row is worked under the first, back from left to right, with each stitch made the other way around: up at its upper right, down at its lower left. The slant on the front does not change. How to needlepoint shows both rows in pictures.

How to teach it

1. Get everything ready first: the canvas cut, the yarn cut into lengths, the needles threaded. A child's attention is short, and it should be spent stitching.
2. Show the stitch slowly on a scrap of the same canvas, while the child watches.
3. Let the child make it on the scrap, with your help, until the movement comes easily.
4. Start the yarn on the real piece yourself. No knot is left in the work. On plastic canvas, bring the needle up through the first hole and stop pulling when an inch or two (2.5 to 5 cm) of yarn is left on the back of the canvas. Hold that tail flat against the back, along the row, and make the first few stitches over it so that they pin it down. On woven canvas, start with a waste knot, a knot that is cut off once stitches hold the yarn: how to start and end a thread has the steps.
5. Hand over the needle and sit alongside with stitching of your own. A child who is watched and corrected at every stitch can stop enjoying it.
6. End each length yourself until the child has learned to run the needle under the stitches while you watch. Turn the piece over, run the needle under a few stitches on the back, and cut the yarn close: the cut stays with you. Say why each time: yarn cut off right after the last stitch lets the stitches come undone, and a child who has been told once may well forget.
7. Stop when interest goes, and come back to it another day.

Teach one or two things in a sitting, not everything at once. Three slips are common:

• Around the edge. The child loses track of which side the needle is on and carries the yarn over the edge of the piece. It stops with practice.
• Twisted yarn. Let the needle hang until the yarn untwists.
• Uneven pull. On plastic canvas, stitches pulled tight let the plastic show, and loose ones look uneven. On woven canvas, tight stitches pull the canvas out of shape.

Expect all three: the trying matters more than a perfect piece. When the piece is done, show it to other people.

A left-handed child makes the same stitch with the same slant, but begins at the lower left and works the first row from left to right. To see how any stitch is worked left-handed, turn its diagram upside down. Show the stitch with your own left hand if you can. Some left-handed children pick up the needle in the right hand of their own accord. Let them.

How long to expect

• A sitting. One guide for parents suggests 10 to 15 minutes for a child under 7, and 20 to 30 minutes for an older one. Ten minutes is enough for a start. One embroidery teacher's classes of 9 to 15 year olds ran an hour and a half without a break; she would not go past two hours.
• A piece. For anything bigger than the ring, time one row, count the rows and judge from that.
• Between sittings. Give the piece a place where it is kept safe, so the child can come back to it.

What the adult does

Besides starting each length, and threading and ending it until the child has learned how, three things stay with the adult.

• All the cutting. The yarn into lengths, plastic canvas to shape, woven canvas to size, and the end of each finished length. To cut plastic canvas, count the bars the piece needs, then count them again. Cut along the row of holes just outside the last bar counted, close to that bar and never into it: the bars hold the stitches. Trim off the small nubs left along the cut edge. The plastic canvas guide has more on marking and on corners.
• Watching. Stay with a young child the whole time. A tapestry needle is blunt, but it is still a needle. The child stays seated while holding it. A needle that is put down goes to the same place every time, so that none is lost: a pincushion or a needle case, or, on woven canvas, the bare canvas at the edge of the work, never the stitches. Most very young children put things in their mouths: keep needles, buttons and other small things away from them.
• Finishing. A piece on woven canvas is usually blocked, which straightens it, and then made up into an ornament, a pillow or a framed picture, which is called finishing. Both are work for an adult, or for a finisher, whose trade it is.

Teaching a group

• Give every child the same set, made up beforehand: a cut piece of canvas and two needles. When children bring their own supplies, the differences make a class hard to keep together.
• Cut the yarn in advance and lay it out by color. The scissors stay with the adults.
• Show a new stitch to three to five children at a time, close up and on coarse canvas, not to the whole room. Each child watches it made, makes it with help, then practices while the adults go around.
• Give every needle a place. Each child puts the needle away on stopping, as "Watching" above describes.

Teenagers

A teenager can start as an adult does, on 13 mesh woven canvas with a size 20 needle and tapestry wool. How to needlepoint sets it out, and a kit puts everything in one package. On 13 mesh, a chart 72 stitches square comes to about 5 1/2 inches (14 cm) across.

Do not make it too easy. One teacher of children of 7 and up finds them more capable than adults expect: work made too simple gets rushed, and a little difficulty slows them down so that they learn.

Offer it as something to make, not as something that is good for them. Children and teenagers tend to turn away from anything presented that way.

Needlepoint or cross stitch first?

Either: plastic canvas is used to teach children both. Needlepoint asks less at the start, in two ways.

• The stitch. Tent stitch is one slanted stitch, the same movement every time, and repeating one movement gives a child who is learning confidence. A cross stitch is two that cross.
• Counting. A design painted on canvas, or plain stripes on plastic canvas, needs no counting. Cross stitch is usually counted from a chart, though it too is sold with the design printed on the fabric.

Needlepoint vs cross stitch compares the two crafts.