Hand Sewing with Beatrix Potter and the Tailor of Gloucester

This post may contain affiliate links.

This month is Beatrix Potter’s Birthday, July 28, 1866.  Her stories have long been favorites in our home! We have a fun little collection of her stories that we adore and re-read often. Today I want to share one of my favorites and is not as well known as some of there others called the Tailor of Gloucester. We also did a little hand sewing craft to go along with it!

You probably are familiar with the story of the Elves and the Shoemaker.  The Tailor of Gloucester story reminds me a lot of that one. It is such a sweet little story. It is about a poor tailor who barely makes enough money to survive. He is making a suit coat for the mayor who will be married on Christmas day. but gets ill and cannot finish it, some kind mice, who are saved from the tailor’s cat by the tailor himself, return the favor and finish the coat for him!

From then on the tailor becomes successful and well-known for his beautiful embroidery work!

What I love about Beatrix Potter’s stories are the old fashioned style and the wonderful moral messages. The kids love the stories, but they are learning to understand words that are a bit more difficult and challenging. Even my 5-year-old loves to sit and listen in to her stories.

My daughter absolutely loves sewing, so I set up a hand sewing project for her to go along withe the Tailor of Gloucester story. I used some burlap fabric and an embroidery hoop. We picked out some fun colors of embroidery thread that she likes. Then she used a marker to sketch a drawing onto the burlap.  While she worked on it, I read the Tailor of Gloucester to her.

Once her drawing was done, she began sewing and filling in the images. She has done a little cross stitching in the past and wanted to use that method.

She is very meticulous with her sewing and was not ready to show her finished work yet. I will have an update when she is done! 🙂

This is part of the Famous Birthday Series from the iHomeschool Network. Check out some of the other posts by clicking the image below.