Adrian is thinking ahead to Halloween. He found that cloak I made years ago and thought he might want to use it to dress up as a wizard. A wizard needs a staff, of course, but he also wanted some spells. So he is now making a ball of ice and water magic from blue fleece.

He just started doing textile crafts at school this year so he’s had some practice with basic pinning and cutting and sewing. But not machine sewing, which he wants to use to sew the pieces together, so he’s doing that under close supervision.

Helping kids with their crafts projects is a tricky balancing act. If I help and meddle and guide too much, it’s not fun. But if I meddle too little and the final result comes out way too wonky, he will be disappointed in it and won’t want to sew again. He’s not so fast at it that he could just throw the first attempt away and make a new one. So I meddle just enough to help him avoid mistakes that would be hard to recover from – and also help him understand that the smaller mistakes that he does make are not the end of the world and can be recovered from.