Kids love fabric, and it makes an excellent craft medium – and you can get them started with a few scraps – you may recognize most of the ones in the bin above from Johnny’s king costume and the girls’ butterfly costumes! Four-year-old Lily plays with this little bin of scraps several times a week – sorting them, taping pieces together, pretending that small pieces are people – the possibilities are endless!
Most people think of felt for kid crafting; this post is about fabric projects that don’t involve felt (although long-time readers will know that I adore felt). I thought this would be a fun way to branch outside of the standard felt projects for other ideas of ways kids can get involved with fabric crafting.
Here are a few fabric crafting projects my kids made entirely on their own:
What You'll Find on This Page
- Mixed-media explorations with fabric scraps
- Decorating canvas bags with fabric markers
- Fashion design for kids
- Decorate fabric with foam stickers (which stick really well to fabric projects, provided you don’t wash the product!)
- Cardboard, tape, and rags play scape
- Peg doll and recyclables doll house
The kids made these projects with help from me
- Dying fabric with special dye paper (in our experience, this dye washes out, so I recommend it more for projects you don’t plan to wash much, such as totes)
- Easy DIY patchwork doll quilt tutorial
- Airbrushed shirts (have held up remarkably well through many washings)
- Silk screened shirts (have also held up incredibly well through multiple washings)
- Drawstring goody bags to decorate
- Doll clothes from cast-off topsÂ
- Tie-dye shirts
These projects were mostly made by me, but the kids love playing with/wearing/using them:
- No-sew (and very sturdy) flannel/felt board
- No-sew fabric-covered box
- Easy-sew bean bags
- Baby texture book
- Handbag from cast-off jeans
- I Spy quilt
- Handmade doll bed
- Fleece patches for clothing
- Teddy bears with pattern
- 15-minute princess gown tutorial
- Easy-sew princess gown
- Decorate-a-monster stuffie tutorial
- Weighted blanket tutorial
- Baby doll carrier tutorial
Want to sew with your kids but don’t know much about sewing? Here are some basic sewing tips that can help you get started!
This is day four of the Ultimate Guide to 50 Craft Materials Linky! Click on the link to see the full schedule at Craftulate.
Have a (non-felt – that will be covered on a different day) fabric craft to share? I hope you’ll link up below!
MaryAnne is a craft loving educator, musician, photographer, and writer who lives in Silicon Valley with her husband Mike and their four children.
I love fabric too! I’ve just put a bunch up – a mix of kids clothes and crafts. My kids use scrap fabric for random dress ups all the time. I could add a bunch more appliqued kids clothes, but I don’t want to clog up your linky. :)
Thanks or linking up, Danya!
I love how your kids like to exercise their creativity!
Hi MaryAnne, I wanted to link a kids sewing fabric craft up but I can’t see the link!
Hi Trixi,
Sorry about that – the code got corrupted somehow. I fixed it, and you should be able to link up now. Thanks for letting me know!
As much as I love my kiddo’s school, I feel like they don’t do enough of these crafts that I wish they would. I’m all about mixed media, not just paper and glue and paint.
So many great ideas!
You have the best fabric crafts! I love reading about them because I am not that crafty! I have to send my girls to a kids sewing school to learn!
We have just painted TShirts with fabric colors on 2 occasions. I never posted about it though, but it was definitely FUN!
I am amazed how crafty you and your children are. We are just now branching into sewing, but so far daughter has not been terribly interested. This is a great round up of your fabric ideas.
Thanks, Natalie! It’s really interesting how in-born interests seem to be. Out of my parents’ ten kids, I was the only one who ever got into crafting, so I guess I got the gene for it – and passed it on to my kids :)
Well, I’ve added four or so, and I think I’ll stop there. I’ve not even finished going through all the possible posts.
Thanks for linking up!
I”m sure I’ve got some non-felt fabric crafts to link up…….
So many fun ideas! I’m not much of a sewer (or a sewer at all!) but I love the idea of giving the kids fabric scraps and seeing what they come up with!
Thanks, Emma! I love the simplicity of handing kids a box of scraps and letting them do the rest!
Love that beautiful picture of fabric scraps! No wonder Lily enjoys having a play with them. :)
Thank you, Elisa!