-This post sponsored by JOANN. This post may contain affiliate links.- 

This holiday season JOANN is partnering with St. Jude to raise money to help children battling illnesses. The goal is to raise $1M to raise to help these children, and they have several ways that you can help. One way is through donations in stores or online at joann.com/st-jude. Another way that they are raising money is through a collection of fabrics inspired by artwork created by St. Jude patients. 

These Halloween pillows were my project for week 2 of So You Think You're Crafty, Kids Can Do was the theme. I haven't really done a lot of kid's craft projects on my blog but it is something I have been wanting to do more of for a long time. I think it is so important for kids to have opportunities to be creative and to learn how to create. When I was deciding on a project I wanted something that they could do from start to finish, with varying degrees of help depending on their age and abilities. I wanted them to start with the design and then see their idea become a reality.

I have a little girl who has been begging me to teach her to sew for a while now. I started her with some simple embroidery but she got bored with that pretty quick. She really wants to learn to sew with the sewing machine. I have been trying to come up with something that would be really easy for her to make for her first try at the machine. I thought of lots of really simple projects that are just sewing straight lines for the seams, things like skirts or pillowcases. But for her first project I wanted something where she wasn't sewing seams so that if her seam allowance wasn't even it wasn't a big deal. That might come from the fact that the first thing that I remember sewing was a quilt and my seam allowances were kind of all over the place, sometimes way too close to the edge, so the first time through the wash it started to fall apart.

A few days ago my daughter asked me if I could teach her to sew something. I have to admit it made me pretty happy to hear her say that, even if it was really just her way of trying to get out of doing her homework. I told her I would think of some ideas and she could pick something she wanted to make. I already had some ideas of the kind of things that I want to start her out with but that gave me the idea to see what I could find online for simple sewing projects to make with kids. So, today's free pattern roundup is some simple, beginner type sewing projects that I thought might be good projects to make with your child who is learning to sew. All of these are machine sewing tutorials that are either intended for kids or beginners or they are simple enough that I thought they could be easily adapted to use with kids. I think that we will start with a little bit of hand sewing first and then work our way up to using the machine. If you are trying to think of some beginner projects to teach your child to sew or maybe even to learn yourself you should check out these tutorials. Click on the picture or the title to find the tutorials.