I did well in Home Economics at school.  My success was not due to my technical ability (I don’t even sew buttons well) but because I was able to explore the steps involved to achieve the final product.  This is called the design process.  I decided to teach my children this process while making some Christmas clothes for their teddies.

The Basic Design Process

Have a goal – for us it was to make cute Christmas outfits for teddies.

Research material types – this was easy – Christmassy.

Draw Design - My girls spend about 30 min designing and re-designing the outfits.

Pattern Making – I really used guess work here.

Make – Putting it all together.

My girls were engrossed in the activity and were excited to see their drawings come to life.  It’s worthwhile teaching a child the processes behind the things we often take for granted.  How does milk get into the supermarket fridge?  Where does our meat come from?  Who makes the clothes in the shops?  The design process can be explored to answer these and many other questions.

If you want to try this activity here are the steps you’ll need to follow:

Materials

Fabric - Most sewing shops have a min buy of 0.4 metres which is plenty or raid the remnants bin.

Sewing machine - I used a glue gun for this activity

Paper – for pattern making

Fashion Template One

Fashion Template Two

Note: To download my fashion templates click on the link.  This will take you to another page and then click again for the PDF file. 

Steps:

1. Plan your goal.

2. SHOP!

3.  Print out the fashion template and get your child to draw their design.  Talk to your child about shapes, necklines and lengths.  These are the designs we came up with.

4. Trace out a rough pattern on a piece of paper.  Believe me, I’m not a sewer or a pattern maker and my design was very rough but it gave the children an idea of the steps involved.

5. Cut out your pattern and trace it on the wrong side of the fabric.

6. Cut out the material and sew (or glue) together.

7. Pray that it fits your child’s toy.  It’s easy to start again if you have to.

They girls were thrilled with the final product. *phew*

If you don’t feel like doing all the steps above, your child can just draw dresses on the template.  Here is Miss Flossie’s collection (8).