Cookie Cutter Gingerbread Softies

Happy December, may yours be filled with peace, love and happiness. 

Are your kids jumping off the walls yet? Mine were relatively calm until we put up our tree this past weekend and now we've reached a new level of holiday hysteria which I think is going to slowly expand until it explodes around Christmas Day. 

So with all this Christmas excitement we are thrilled to be sharing another simple sewing tutorial for Trixie over at Coloured Buttons. She's hosting another sew a softie campaign only this time with a holiday feel, tr la la la. If you've not come across her site she's a sewing teacher in Australia who has great simple projects to introduce kids to sewing. She even has an online book you can download with loads of great projects and tips in it.

I find that to engage my kids in a sewing project its best to follow the following guidelines:

1. Keep the project really simple
2. Make sure they don't take too long to finish (if they do I get left with 1/2 sewn creations) so something they can do in an hour or two depending on swing skills
3. At the end make sure they have something cute left they can be proud of

So for our contribution to Sew a December Softie we are creating a set of Cookie Cutter Gingerbread softies. These guys are fun because they allow the big kids to practice a few different sewing skills in the 'decorating' stage and the sewing of the final piece is not too time consuming so younger kids could sew the base gingerbread man but decorate using glue and add ons if necessary.

Supplies:

Felt, this is an easy material for little fingers to begin sewing with

Scissors

Needle and embroidery thread

Gingerbread Cookie Cutter - any cookie cutter works if you wanted to create trees etc

Filling

Step 1

Have your child begin by tracing out the shape onto felt, you will need two shapes cut for each softie you are creating.

Cut the two shapes out of the felt.

Step 2

If you are going to sew on your decorations its easier to do this before you stitch the two halves together. Try using buttons, beads or simply the embroidery thread to create the face and buttons etc.

For our gingerbread house we sewed on a door, window and wreath. 

Younger kids could glue or draw on details at this stage to make it a little easier for them.

Step 3

Once you've decorated the front side you can begin sewing the two halves together. We learnt a blanket stitch to sew around the edge of the bear.

Begin by knotting your thread and pushing needle through.

Loop thread around needle

Pull thread through loop

Pull tight and repeat, sew all the way around leaving a gap at one end to stuff the gingerbread man

Step 4

Stuff your softie, we used a polly fill stuffing. Push down and into head and arms with your finger. Once stuffed finish sewing around the leg and tie off with another knot.

Happy kid with a cute gingerbread playset