Homemade Christmas Gifts--for kids!

I’m a little late coming to the party, but at least I’m here, right?  Chris over at Just a Girl (which is a fabulous creative blog, btw) is having a party where we share all of our wonderful ideas for homemade gifts this holiday season.  I haven’t had time to do much partying yet, but I am sure there are TONS of fabulous ideas there, so go check it out—after you read, my post, that is.  :-)

Here are ideas for gifts you can make for children this Christmas.  Ironically, they all involve fabric and sewing (some more than others), which is not my forte, but maybe it is yours.  Or maybe, you have a miracle worker mom, too, that can help you out.

Animal Hooded Towels

I already posted about these here, but I have had a few requests for patterns, which I don’t currently have, since we kind of made it up as we went along.  I may be able to make some patterns to post in the future, but I wouldn’t hold your breath for them before Christmas.  We used full-sized towels for the main part, plus a hand towel for the hood.  Additional elements were cut from other towels and sewn on top of the existing towel, making them extra thick in those spots.  I will see if my mom has time to help me work up a tutorial…but like I said, don’t hold your breath.

The Dick & Jane Chair

I was going to wait until I do my Miracle Worker Week (where I show you all of the projects that my parents and I accomplished while they were in town) to reveal my Dick and Jane chair, but these would make fantastic Christmas presents, so I am sharing now.  I’m not sure the pictures do it justice, but I LOVE this reading chair!  So do my kids!  (Notice the book, waiting to be read).  We used this pattern for the chair.  And the Fabulous Dick & Jane Fabrics, by Michael Miller.  (NOTE:  We did NOT follow the pattern when deciding which fabric would go where on the chair.)

Remember this post? Well there is still a bit to do in the loft, but I got some more fabric from this line for the window treatments. I'll post when we get it all together. 

In fairness, I must warn that this could be a costly project, if you buy all of the material to fill the chair, new.  However, if you have a miracle worker for a mom, she has random stuff lying around her house that she can sew together to form the body of the chair, and all you have to pay for is the cute fabric to slipcover it. 

These could be personalized or done in any combination of fabrics to make them more exciting to your children.

The Soft Doll House

My mom just made this house for my niece for Christmas and it brought back all kind of memories.  When I was a little girl, she helped my big sisters make houses like these for my younger sisters and I.  Mine was blue to house my “blueberry muffin” doll (I don’t think the new Strawberry Shortcake has her as a friend anymore—how sad!).

This house was made from a discontinued McCalls pattern # 8346 (try ebay or etsy?).

Car Town

Again, these make me feel a little nostalgic.   My brother had a few of these, growing up, entirely drawn on canvas with a sharpie marker.  (He always got the biggest house and owned the construction company, but my sister and I still wanted to play cars with him, if we played on the car town.)

This version was made using several techniques.  First I bought tan canvas—I would have gone with something green, but we live in the desert, folks.  We found several cotton prints with buildings and elements we could use like a racetrack, airport, houses, etc.  I cut out roads from grey fabric and my mom sewed everything down.  I filled in greenery and road stripes and lots of other stuff with fabric paint and some stamping.  A few buildings we wanted were not available in fabric, so we found clip art and modified it, then printed it on to fabric (or an iron-on-transfer) and sewed those on as well.  That allows you to personalize it to include buildings that are part of their lives and other things they might be excited about.

Here is an example of a building that used all three techniques.  I cut out the hardware store from fabric, made the Home Depot sign on the computer and painted the edges and bushes to round it out.

I also found these great stand-up signs at the Dollar Spot at Target (don't know if they will ever carry them again).  Put a few matchbox cars in a stocking and you're good to go!

This project can be rather time-consuming, depending on how detailed you want to make it.  But sometimes the fun is in the details.  I named my son’s town Trenton, because that is his name, and there is a town or two named Trenton for real!

I think our main gift to our kids, this year, is going to be to decorate their bedrooms.  My plan is to wrap up some of the elements that will go in their rooms (cans of paint, if necessary) for them to open Christmas morning, then ship them off to Grandma’s for a couple of days, while we transform the rooms.  I am visualizing a BIG reveal when they come back—like on the TV shows--but we don’t have a crew helping us out, so we will see.

I’d love to hear if you are making anything for your kids this year.  If you use any of these ideas I’d love to see pictures!