Gifts: Make Your Own Craft Kit

My mom is notable for her gifted kit creations. She gave me my first sewing kit for Christmas when I was the tender age of 27. The sewing kit was a large box filled with trays of buttons, elastic, velcro, chocolate, needles, thread, scissors, measuring tape, ric rac, and fabric glue. I still have the box and the supplies continue to grow as I add my own sewing notions. A few years later she gave me a wire working kit, which was a tool box filled with wire, beads, and an array of wire tools.

Creating your own crafty kid (or adult) kit can be as simple as buying a skein of pretty yarn, a pair of candy colored needles and a book or as complicated as a complete DIY kit for the kid who really wants to put their own personal style into every project.


I put together this little Make It Your Own Knit Kit for my niece, it includes supplies and instructions for kids to make and paint their own needles and dye their own yarn.
I'm also including one of my favorite how-to books Kids Learn to Knit by Lucinda Guy.

The kit includes 2 (1/4" x 8") dowels, two ball head dowel caps*, scrap of fine grit sandpaper, big scrap of wax paper, pencil sharpener, 2 (1 ounce) hanks of natural wool yarn, 2 packs of Kool Aid, yarn needle (not shown) and a drawstring bag to keep it all together. The paint and wood glue is optional.


*These nifty little dowel caps have 1/4" hole that fits neatly onto 1/4" dowels. The caps can be left in natural wood, but my daughter and I had fun painting a few.

The ends of the needles could also be 1/2" buttons, 1/2" wood plugs, or Fimo clay (that can be rolled and pressed into a disk).

Other crafty kit ideas:

First Sewing Kit: sewing needles, colorful threads, fabric, buttons, ribbon, ric rack, scissors, pins, a pretty sewing basket, and a book of first projects and stitches (Sewing Fun for Kids, by Lynda Milligan or See and Sew, by Tina Davis.

First Embroidery Kit: embroidery hoop,a few colorful skeins of floss, embroidery needles (with elongated eyes), gingham and linen fabrics, a project basket or box, and a book of stitches (like Kids Embroidery, by Kristin Nicholas).