Knitting, quilting give pupils life lessons

To get a fresh take on old skills, I went back to school one morning last week – to teacher Martha Stepp’s fourth-grade class at Weatherbee School in Hampden.

My escort from the principal’s office was Taylor, one of Stepp’s pupils who chose to learn to knit when Stepp organized an informal, not-required, group last fall. About 12 of her 19 pupils participated.

“They did it on their own time,” Stepp said. “They had to be here at 7:30 in the morning and find a way to get here, usually parents drove them because it was too early for the school bus. And they had to get their own supplies. Then we sat and knit.” In that way, teacher and pupils got to know one another in a social way and have fun together.

“We had conversations and established a rapport,” Stepp said. It was also a way to demonstrate to her pupils what it means to interact with someone. “Even though computers and televisions have ‘interactive’ programs, you’re not really interacting with anything.”

Taylor showed me a dishcloth, knit with yellow variegated cotton yarn, he’s working on. I pulled a similar one out of my knitting bag and we compared our work. He finds knitting challenging and interesting, and has completed several small projects. One of his soccer buddies also tried knitting, and sometimes when one of the moms was driving them to practice they’d sit in the back seat and analyze the structure of what they were knitting. Then off they’d go to boot the ball around the field.

Learning to knit teaches children many things, Stepp said. They learn to cast on, to knit, purl, do yarn overs, and bind off – the technical things. They learn to follow directions and how to unsnarl knots. They learn that if you make a mistake you can go back and correct it – or not, because sometimes a well-placed yarn over, which creates a hole in the knit fabric, can become a design statement. They also learn a lesson in commitment, not only to learn something new, but to be there when the group meets.

Stepp has been teaching her pupils to knit for about 10 years and estimates that 100 pupils gave knitting a try during that time. “Kids I had in my class years ago tell me they still knit,” she said.

One of the two Jennifers in the current class is so involved with knitting she asked for knitting supplies for her birthday. To her delight, her sister gave her knitting needles in sizes 1-13 and skeins of yarn, one purple, one fuzzy. The other Jennifer is trying her hand at circular needles. She’s excited about going to a knitting class this summer where she will learn to knit a little pouch bag.

During a question-and- answer session, the pupils asked when I’d learned to knit and how. I told them I was 17 when I learned to knit and that I taught myself. I showed them my sock in progress and gave a brief demonstration of knitting with four double-pointed needles.

When asked what they dream of knitting in the future, the children said socks and sweaters. Eli wants to knit a scarf in bright colors and Taylor wants to knit “a very long scarf.”

The class also learned quilting this year as part of a unit on geometry.

They had to measure, plot the measurements on graph paper, cut out pieces and figure out how to add triangles to a rectangle to create a diamond shape. Stepp chose dusty green, which served as a unifying element, for the triangles, but the children chose their own fabrics and color schemes for the backing and central diamond shape. In that way, geometry and art meshed in a most agreeable way.

“It was a way for them to learn how to apply their math skills,” Stepp said. The children sewed tabs on their quilt squares and, in the process, learned to thread a needle. They used twigs for hanging the quilt squares. Stepp hung the quilt squares on the wall so they could see what the whole thing looked liked without actually sewing it all together.

What it all looked like to me was a lesson in life, beautifully taught, happily learned.

Snippets

The DMC Corp. is offering a free skein of craft thread and instructions for Happy Face projects, which will appeal to kids of all ages. Send a legal-size, self-addressed, stamped envelope to: DMC Dept. CT1-CT, S. Hackensack Ave., Port Kearny Bldg. 10F, S. Kearny, NJ 07032. To learn more about the DMC Corp., visit www.dmc.com.