Special Guest Thursday: Making Clothes For Your Toys {Trilingual Children}

This Thursday is the last one of Special Guest Thursday series and I have a very special guest over – Galina from Raising a Trilingual Child. Galina is originally from Russia, just as I am, and she is also raising a multilingual family. We are both members of MKB. The tutorial below is a gift from Galina for the birth of our third baby and I am more than happy to share it with my readers!

Galina is a mother of two charming kids, whom she is raising trilingual in Italian, Russian and English. She loves helping other parents whose children have stepped or about to step on the the road of bilingualism or multilingualism.  Visit her blog Raising a Trilingual Child and connect with her on Facebook — Google+ — Twitter —  Pinterest

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It’s been a very unusual summer in Italy where we live. It started to rain in June and it still rains a lot in July.  Hardly  ideal summer weather, if you have two kids to take care of, as any outdoor activities are off the list.

One day I was running out of ideas – we did everything we could and  my two kids were getting bored.  Then my eyes fell on a pair of old pants that I was about to toss away.

I had a light bulb moment: Let’s make clothes for our toy animals! Out the pair of old pants!

The kids love the idea.

We started with design for our models:  the grey cat, the white cat and the Big Boy (our bear)

The grey cat was the first to get measured  – step 1.

We measured  how big its hug is. This is the distance from an end of one paw to another, when the spreads his cat’s arms wide open to give us a hug.

We measured how big its heart is. This is the circumference measured just below the armpits.

We measured how well he eats. This is the circumference of the widest part around the waist.

We measured how long his legs are. This is the distance from his waist ( it is very hard to find one in toys 🙂 ) to the bottom of his paws.

Next step – step 2 – is to make a sewing pattern. We drew the tops and the bottom of the cat’s outfit using the provided above measurements and added about 1 cm (which is approximately ½ inch ) for seam allowances.

Step 3. Then the kids cut the sewing pattern out.

Step 4. We fixed the sewing patterns onto the fabric with safety pins. There should be two layers of fabric underneath.

IMPORTANT: Use safety pins instead of regular ones to make sure kids do not hurt themselves!

Step 5. Cut the fabric following the pattern. And this is normally the time, when I ask myself : Are you sure you did not mess up some measurements or the pattern placement? This time I put the worries aside, as we have more pants to destroy if needed, and I let my older child to take the scissors and cut the fabric!

Step 6. Remove the safety pins, separate the parts.

Step 7. Place fabric details with face side to each other and fix with safety pins.

Step 8. Sew the parts together with a needle (or use a sewing machine, which I do not have)  – the seams of sleeves and bottom. This step I did all by myself, as my kids are still small; however, I think it is great to allow your older children to help you.

Step 9. And finally the excitement of trying out the outfit ! Guess what? Our grey cat loved it! It said : “ Meow!” which means “Thank you!”

Step 10. Repeat the steps to have more fun and make your kids and their toys are happy 🙂

With love from mama Galia!