Our first sewing project
Sew a Softie
Trixi from Sew a Softie kindly invited us to join her Sew A Softie tutorial hop! Trixi’s goal is to encourage adults and kids around the world to learn to sew! Her website Sew a Softie is full of wonderful resources and is definitely the best place for you and your kids to get started!
I’m not terrific at sewing. I have a sewing machine and I can handle the basics, but I’ve never done much sewing by hand. Still, I was really excited to see what my 4 year old son thought of sewing. He is interested in clothing. Lately he’s asked me about how fabric is made and mentioned he wants to make himself a shirt, so I thought this would be a great introduction for him.
Supplies
We kept things very simple and used these items (amazon affiliate links to similar items below):
- Felt squares
- Embroidery thread / floss
- Scissors
- Cardstock / paper
- Marker
- Googley eyes
- Hot glue gun
Amazon Affiliate Links:
This post contains affiliate links, which means I receive a small commission, at no extra cost to you, if you make a purchase using this link. Please read my disclosure for more information.
Mini Skater Rainbow Color Embroidery Floss Sewing Threads Soft Cotton Cross Stitch Floss Threads for Art Crafts Projects Gift Bracelet Strings (50 Colors)
Upins 1000 Pcs Black Wiggle Googly Eyes with Self-Adhesive, 6mm 8mm 10 mm 12mm Mixed Packaging
How We Made Our Softie
I took Trixi’s expert advice and let my son own this project. He decided to make a dog, just like the puppy his uncle recently brought home (scroll to the bottom of this post for a photo of the actual dog!). I wanted to make a starfish, seashell or something fun, bright and beachy. He was adamant it had to be a dog.
Below is a quick outline of how we made our little dog, but I’d urge you to check out Trixi’s website Sew a Softie for so much wonderful information on sewing with kids, including supply lists, how to do basic stitches, a list of golden rules and much more!
- First we drew a sketch of the shape of the dog on paper. My son had lots to say about how it should look so he directed me here. Then he chose the felt and thread colours he wanted. They had to be black and brown because that’s the colour of uncle’s dog…
- I cut out the dog’s body, tail and ears on paper. Then used those papers as a guide to cut out the felt. I used squares of felt we used on Amazon. We probably should have pinned the paper to the felt, or traced it, but I ‘winged it’ and it turned out okay!
- I used a needle to ‘pre-poke’ holes in the felt and my son did the sewing of the body with embroidery thread and a semi-blunt needle. I wavered about which needle to let him try but went with a blunt one for our first go (of course carefully supervise no matter what needle you use!)
- He stuffed the body of the dog with cotton wool I’d saved from the inside of a bottle of vitamins (hooray for hoarding potential craft supplies!).
- I sewed on the tail, nose and hot glued on some googley eyes.
Excuse my son’s exceptionally dirty nails here (can you tell he’s always digging in the dirt?). I was really happy to see how much ownership Mr. 4 took over this project. It was really difficult not to do all the sewing for him, not to interrupt him, not to suggest different colours…it took much longer to make but the whole point was to let him do it. And I’m so glad I let him run with it. As I type he’s reading beside me with his little dog (named Link) cuddled in his arm.
Thank you so much to Trixi @sewasoftie on Instagram for inspiring us to make this little guy! We have lots of colours left and I suspect there will be more sewing in our future!
I love your sons dog and how you followed his intuition!! And Im looking forward to seeing that shirt!!!
I can’t wait to see what he comes up with too! Thanks again for all the inspiration
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