Crafts for kids

My son loves to play dress up.  He finds it very convenient that I can sew and makes a lot of suggestions for projects for me to work on for him.  For Halloween I made both a set of bat wings and a last minute Boba Fett (bounty hunter from Star Wars) costume when he changed his mind.  We couldn't buy a Boba Fett costume, 1. because I don't buy costumes, 2. because he didn't actually want to be Boba Fett, he wanted to be LEGO Boba Fett.  He only knew Star Wars through the lego video game, so when I showed him pictures of an actual Boba Fett costume, he kept saying it was wrong. this is what I came up with.

You can sort of see the bat wings I made for the petite mademoiselle along with my first attempt at a tutu.  She wore it for about as long as it took me to take the picture.  Sigh!  If you couldn't tell from the picture, she was a bat fairy for Halloween.  I did have to explain that one once or twice.  Once she ripped off the tutu, we called her a bat.

This brings us to today.  The kids and I headed downstairs for some sewing for me and a movie/destroying the toy closet for them.  As we were walking downstairs, the wee monsieur said, "Mama, I have a good idea."  I brace myself when ever he utters this phrase, because something outrageous or flagrante de lecto, usually follows.  He continued, "Mama, you should sew me a beard.  Isn't that a good idea?"  Now, don't worry, I didn't fall down the stairs despite not being able to brace myself.  This actually wasn't the first time he had asked me to sew him a beard.  You read correctly, my 4 year old has asked me to make him a beard more than once.  Then he specified that it should be a grey beard.

Oke-dokey, one grey beard coming up.  I trotted over to my bin of fleece and grabbed two grey scraps probably left over from when I made knight helmets, cut triangles big enough to cover his face, off set them a bit and sewed along the top.  Then I cut enough super thin elastic to go behind his head from ear to ear, sewed the elastic to one corner of the sewn together triangles, measured and sewed the elastic to the other corner.  Finally, I cut a slit for his mouth.

Hmmm.  I appear to have a problem getting pictures to stay in the correct orientation.  Well, just turn your head to the side for the moment and I'll try and fix it later.  He was VERY pleased with his new beard.

Crafting for your kids can be fun and they are kids so they don't know if you aren't very good or hate finishing things properly.   Fleece is great for kids dress up.  It has enough body to make great armor and hats or um, beards.  You don't have to hem it, you can hot glue if needed and it is CHEAP.  Boba Fett up above is all fleece as are the numerous knight helmets, armor, cowboy vests and gun belts that I've made in the last few years.  Between fleece and the oriental trading company, you can outfit a very nice dress up box for not very much money.