Works-In-Progress: Stuffed Animals!

My parents and I collectively babysit my niece and nephew most weekends, and they're the most of-the-wall five and six year old you'd ever meet. I've spent loads of time with kids this age while student teaching and babysitting. Your average kindergartener's main areas of interest include animals, zombies, farting (seriously, what does the school cafeteria even feed them?), and Netflix.

Yesterday alone produced gems such as my nephew announcing to everyone that he was going to fart, and then he made a ran for the front door. My parents were always pretty permissive with their own kids, and now more so with my sister's kids. So the kids get to do pretty much whatever they want all weekend, including drawing on the walls, tv, computer monitor, my dad's clothes, my craft table, and every important document that arrives in the mail.

This was the first time I'd been home for a babysitting weekend since I moved in with my parents mid-April, and I wanted to rein the kids in. I want them to express their creativity, but not on the walls or furniture. I also wanted to reduce their "screen time" as much as possible; I've always hated how my sister and parents use the tv and iPad to occupy the children. At their age, it's more appropriate for them to play with toys and art materials. So I decided to start on a new project and involve the kids in it.

Yesterday, I posted photos of my niece and nephew drawing. I've saved their drawings (an elephant and a reindeer), and I've begun making stuffed animals from the drawings. First, I used their drawings as a guide to make a template for the stuffed animal. I tried to stay as true to their drawings as I could.

My niece's most detailed drawing was of this elephant, so it's the one I chose to work with.

See the drawing on the right? He wasn't very interested in drawing; he was just sweet enough to do a few for me because I asked him to.

Next, I selected fabric for each toy. I did not buy new fabric for this project; instead I have a modest collection of cloth and old clothes I rescued from a Goodwill clearance center. I chose two articles of clothing that were no longer wearable, but still useable for the project.

At first you don't notice...

...but this poor cardigan is eaten up with holes.

Okay, honestly, the only problem with this shirt was that I thought it was ugly and couldn't pass up getting this much fabric for like a quarter. This shirt would be flattering on exactly no one.

After I selected the fabric, I cut two pieces of each fabric to make the front and back side of the elephant and the reindeer.

I also added details to the template along the way.

 My next step will be to practice machine sewing curved lines with samples of each type of fabric. My last stuffed animal was hand-stitched, which is fine for decorative purposes, but it wouldn't last ten minutes in the hands of my munchkins. ;)