Laura, from Edinburgh, upcycled an old dressing gown into a toy. Let’s find out how…
What did you do?
My daughter’s old dressing gown was getting too small. Then it got a big tear in it and so we decided to use the material, which is really soft and fluffy, to make it into a soft toy. My daughter drew some designs that she wanted and we got to work. We drew a template for the shape we wanted and used it to cut out 2 pieces of fabric the same size. We sewed the v shapes on each piece of fabric together. Then I used my sewing machine to join the two pieces together – leaving a largish hole at the bottom (you could totally do this by hand and it wouldn’t even take that long, but the sewing machine will make a slighter stronger stitch and is obviously a bit quicker). Then you turn the material inside out so the seam is on the inside.
My daughter cut out eye shapes and the mouth in some black felt I had (but you could just sew these with black thread or whatever material you have in the house). I used embroidery thread to sew the whites of the eyes before hand-sewing the eyes and the mouth on with a running stitch to the toy. Then we stuffed the toy with stuffing I had in the house. You need more than you might think!
Finally, I stitched up the hole at the bottom by hand. It’s a bit wonky and my stitching is pretty basic, but it doesn’t really need to be perfect. This kind of project is pretty forgiving. My daughter loves it and she has called it Fuzz Ball! We’re going to make a couple of smaller baby ones that are completely round and I think I’m just going to embroider the eyes in black.
Anyway, we enjoyed doing this together a lot and my daughter even said that she was so pleased to be able to have made her own toy herself. She said when people ask her where they can find her toy to buy she can say that we made it ourselves and no one will have one like it. I thought that was great.
Fuzz Ball was a bit less round than we thought he would be. I think the cut out V shape made the toy wider, but also more of a cuboid shape. It doesn’t really matter too much, but if you want something round you could just use 2 circles and it will be a round but quite flat toy. I don’t think it is too important though because toys come in all shapes and sizes.
Do you have any other projects planned?
My son has designed a pokemon of his own called Blankey (it’s cube-shaped with different colours on each side and orange fluffy hair). We are obviously going to need to have a go at making this next.
We have also been getting into soap and bath bomb making.
Tell the Housebound With Kids community a bit about yourself…
My name is Laura, I’m a teacher and I live in Edinburgh and have 2 children, a girl, Sophie, who just turned 7, and a boy, Rafi, who has just turned 9.
How are you finding being housebound so far?
It’s been a lot of ups and downs. It’s been really good having more time with Rafi and Sophie, but trying to work and home school has been difficult and sometimes none of us can be bothered to do much. My husband is also working from home. We’ve mostly tried to do creative projects that sometimes have some learning involved. I’m really grateful that my kids get on well (most of the time) and that we have some nice places we can be outdoors and go walking. It makes a big difference.
Do you have any tips for other parents?
Allow the kids to play and don’t expect your house to be tidy very often. Give yourself time off to do your own thing.
Has this website and community helped you?
We will be using it for lots of summer activities.
