Handmade Holidays: Gifts for the Five & Under Crowd

Sewing for kids is one of my favorite things -- I'm sure you can't tell -- so it was fun to come up with things for our smallest nieces and nephews. Both of Ray's sisters had babies this year, whom we finally met this Christmas.  I tried not to hog them too much, but it was tough.  I did get to hold the youngest one, who's just over two months, while he napped.  Is there anything better??

Here's what I made him, to continue on with the football theme.

I used the football softie tutorial from The Train to Crazy, but with football pieces traced from a freebie fleece sewing magazine I picked up years ago from Hancock Fabrics.  I put a cat toy in the middle for the bell. I'm 99% sure that Charlie didn't actually see me do that, but she was quite interested in the football, so maybe it's some special cat sense  Or she's just nosy.

Our other new nephew's mama is a huge book-lover, so I was happy to put a stashed Paddington Bear book panel to good use.

The only thing I didn't like about this was that there didn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to the pages.  The directions even said to place them randomly, but I'm not so good with random and spent wasted a lot of time trying to put them in some sort of sequential order.  It didn't work. But the book was cute anyway.  I ♥ Paddington!

For the three-year-old nephew (and partially for his dad!), I made another Snapazoo. I spent a little more time playing with this one and managed to configure it into more things.

Elephant

Turtle

Seahorse

I also made one for E, even though she can't do the snaps.  I didn't topstich hers, and I think I like that a little better. 

Snapazoo times two!

For my five-year-old nephew, we put together a fort kit.  I used cotton yarn for the ties on the sheet instead of making them from a tee.

Flashlight not pictured

He looked a little puzzled when he opened up his [fabric] gift bag, pulled out the tote bag, and then found the drawstring bag.  Poor kid, he may have thought he was just getting a bunch of bags!  Hopefully he and his older sister have built a fort by now.  If nothing else, he had fun with the flashlight.