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All in the family

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Joan Hawleyis the Quilting Editor here at CraftGossip.com. But long before I knew her from here, I knew her from her adorable, easy and SEW functional sewing patterns. I took a class from my local quilt shop back in the spring, used my first Lazy Girl Designs pattern, and fell in love. Since that class, I’ve made several of her patterns, including the Runaround Bag, pictured here being modeled by my happy daughter, as well as the Wonder Wallet, seen here:

And I’m posting it here to let you know that this is a PERFECT project for a beginning or experienced sewer, kid or otherwise. The patterns are all short and straightforward and most involve nothing more complex than sewing in a straight line. My daughter is only 3 years old and has already asked, more than once, when she can get her own sewing machine so she can make her own bags herself instead of “borrowing” my machine. Your kids could whip up dozens of Christmas gifts based on the patterns, ALL of which are functional. Even boys and men will appreciate and use the Wonder Wallet, which is full of pockets and can be made in virtually any fabric; women will appreciate the handbags, all of which allow room for individual design and decoration.

 

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Build a Paper City with Free Printables

My daughter’s school has project-based finals instead of tests in the spring, and in her geometry class last year the students constructed a scale model of a town complete with three-dimensional buildings. 

Of course building a paper town doesn’t have to include a geometry lesson (they also calculated the volume of their buildings) but it is a fun way to get kids to express their creativity by decorating the buildings and talking about the things they would want to include in their own town. 

Putting buildings together is a test of fine-motor skills, and if kids are working on a town together they’ll need to negotiate what goes where and why. 

Get started with the house printables from Kids Activities Blog. They’ve got a “plain” roof house and a “fancy” roof house to choose from. Just print, color, cut out and assemble. 

You might want more than just houses in your little town, though, so I went hunting for some more printable templates you can use to make different kinds of buildings. 

Brother has printable skyscrapers, cars, people, trees and lights (shown above) that are meant to be printed in color buy you can do them in black and white so kids can color them in if you want.

Printablee has another colorized set of paper buildings including different kinds of houses and something that maybe looks like a church or school. 

If you’re willing and bale to pay for printables to use in your paper town, there are lots of great ones available on Etsy. Ludlow Prints has a collection with a school, grocery store, bakery and other buildings, while Paper Fun By Yumi includes things like a hospital, fire department and police station (essential if you’ve done a community helpers unit!). 

Tiger Bee Learning has a printable set with 20 different buildings, including a bank, library, museum and zoo to name a few, as well as a blank template for kids to design their own buildings. Once you have the basics of making a piece of paper into a 3D building down, kids are sure to want to make their own buildings to add to the town. 

Older kids can also write about why they picked the buildings they did, and littler kids will have fun building their town over and over again. 

[Photo: Brother]