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A Scrappy Moment

Mar23

If you love and enjoy sewing and quilting projects as much as I do, you know that you always have a ton of SCRAP fabrics leftover.  I just have the hardest time throwing those little scraps away.  I tell myself that surely I can find another use for them.   In the meantime, I neatly (as best as you can neatly store scraps) place them into a large plastic storage bin waiting for just that perfect project.

Actually. what really ends up happening is that storage bin has become the greatest place for little fingers to rummage through and get their creative juices flowing.  Needle and thread is not always required but sometimes glue is a must!!

A lot of those little scraps turn into baby doll clothing and accessories, especially for Barbie and her friends.  Take a simple rectangle of fabric, cut two small circles for arms, take a narrow strip of another scrap for a belt and viola you have a coat, or a beach coverup, or a dress whatever design fits the moment.   Make a temporary bed for your doll by laying out another square or rectangle of fabric placing it on the floor then fold up another scrap for a pillow.   A wonderful opportunity to be creative, not only with a simple design but also with color and texture.

One of my favorite scrappy projects is to let your little one select several different colored scraps (blue, green, yellow, red,) and make a mosaic picture.

Simple supplies needed in addition to your scraps:  Scissors, Glue and Construction Paper (or any paper that you have on hand, a good time to recycle a brown paper bag).

Depending upon the age of your child, you will need to cut or help them cut out random shapes and sizes from all the colors of  fabric that they selected.   Don’t worry about fabric fraying, that is what makes it one-of-a-kind.   Let them draw a picture or a shape or just a doodle design onto the paper.  Now for the FUN part, take a fabric shape and glue it onto the drawing.  Continue gluing fabric pieces until you have a completed masterpiece!

If you have a collection of ribbons, yarns, beads, buttons that are looking for a place other than on a shelf, these items make great additions to your mosaic picture.  Please keep in mind the age of your creative little one, you don’t want to use teeny tiny items with very small children!!

  • TIP:  If your child is older,  a simple gluing method is to pour some glue into a plastic, disposable bowl, thin down with a little water, and use a paint brush to adhere the glue to your fabric shape.

HAPPY CREATING!!!

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Wonderful World of Buttons

Feb2

To me, one of the most versatile craft/sewing notions is the BUTTON.  Not only are they practical, fun, and whimsical but beautiful to look at too, especially some of those vintage buttons.  They are also a great item to use with children to rouse the creative juices and to introduce sewing interests.   All ages enjoys dipping their fingers into a big pile of buttons!!     

With very little ones and with the supervision of an adult, you can just string buttons onto a heavy twine or crochet cotton thread (size 3).  Make squilly little snakes, catepillars or pretend your button string is a train, whatever the imagination dreams up.  Your can introduce colors to little ones too, just by sorting your buttons into piles of red, green, blue, etc.   Then replace them back into your container for the next time you have a button moment!!

Older children would enjoy making a sock puppet – simply take that old sock that has a hole in it or the one you never found its mate (probably eaten by the washing machine or dryer) and sew buttons onto the heel of the sock for eyes and a nose.  Felt could be used for a tongue, lips, ears or big circles sewn under the button eyes, then eyelashes could be added.  Just have fun!!

Buttons can be used to decorate the front of a tee shirt – trace a heart shape onto the tee shirt, then sew buttons onto your tracing line to make a button heart.  Be creative, use different colored thread for each button.  No need to match colors of buttons to thread colors.  Another idea would be to use DMC floss as your thread.  Placing button on your tee shirt, sew the thread from the right side to your shirt and back through to the right side, then tie the button with a square knot and leave about 1/2″ tail after making the knot to give another dimension to the look.

HOW TO MAKE A SQUARE KNOT:  take your two threads, one in the left hand and one in the right hand.  Tie the right thread over the left and pull tight, then tie the left thread over the right and pull tight.  Makes for a very secure knot.  A quick way to remember how to make a square knot is the saying:  right over left and left over right.                                                                                 

The ideas are limitless:

  • Sew buttons to the edges of your jean pockets
  • Decorate the bottom of your jeans with different colors and sizes of buttons
  • Take a shirt and sew a flower design onto the pocket
  • Add them to a cuff of a shirt and have a build-in bracelet look
  • Or sew them to the neckline of a tee shirt
  • Use with construction paper and sew or glue them to make a picture of funny animals or a mosaic design
  • Check out Artists Helping Children arts&crafts

Just keep a large jar readily available and fill it with buttons that have been removed from a shirt, coat or blazer.  You can purchase bags of inexpensive buttons at a very reasonable cost and dump them into your button jar for those rainy day craft moments.  Ask grandma or grandpa for any old buttons that they might have to add to your colorful collection.  Don’t forget to check out clothing at a garage sale for that really unique button too.  Buttons are just the best!!!

HAPPY CREATING!!

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Fun with Felt

Jan23

Felt is one of those great materials that can be used for all kinds of crafts and/or projects.  It is a great medium to use with children because it doesn’t fray or ravel, it is very colorful, soft to the touch, glueable, sewable, etc.

I like to use it to help teach young children some basic sewing stitches too.  Felt can be purchased in several different colors and it is already cut into perfect squares and ready to be crafted into something fun.  For a very simple sewing project, let the child select the two pieces of felt they want to work with and just have them whip stitch the two pieces together.   You could also have them put two pieces of fabric together and do a straight stitch, either very long stitches or short stitches will work.  What stitches you show the child, will depend on the age of the little one and their coordination abilities.

If you are working with an older child, let them cut the felt into shapes, like circles or triangles and then sew these together.  Or cut out different colored ovals and circles and stitch together to form a flower. You could have them do a straight stitch along the outer edges of the felt shapes before they are sewn together for a more textured and colorful flower design.  Let imagination take center stage!!

These are activities that should be supervised by an adult.  Remember, don’t use a regular sewing needle, too sharp and too small.  There are actually plastic yarn needles available that will sew through felt and are perfect for little ones.  If you are working with children 7 or older, you could probably use a metal yarn needle or tapestry needles.  These also have the larger eyes with blunt tips too.

There are lots of choices available for your thread selection too.  You could use bright, colorful DMC floss or a ball of crochet thread or even a skein of yarn probably a size 3 or smaller.   Using bright, cheery felt squares with colorful thread makes for a fun craft project.  When using DMC floss, I would suggest using three strands to sew with.

Don’t forget to embellish your finished sewing project.  Felt is a great material to glue things on it.  You can either cut up felt scraps to make eyes, hair or geometric designs or use pompoms, big plastic buttons, cotton balls, construction paper designs; the list is endless.

Enjoy your activity, be creative, expose your little ones to sewing mediums and maybe an artist interest will develop in the process.

HAPPY CREATING!!

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