Making Soft Toys

One of VIVITA’s core values is building a strong creative community. Also, the parents of VIVITA members have diverse backgrounds — from programmers to project managers, graphic designers, composers to illustrators. All of them practice lots of creative skills on a daily basis — sometimes even while being unaware of it. These different backgrounds are especially exciting from the children’s perspective.

This mindset is always introduced to every family that comes to VIVISTOP. We hope to co-create VIVISTOP’s programme with the help of parents and children. That is how Irja Aavik and her daughter Iida came to use with an idea to share their crafting hobby. Both of them are keen on making things by hand. They chose the needle felting technique for the kids to learn.

The needle felting technique itself is remarkably great for kids — it requires a simple movement and shows immediate results. Punching the needle to fix the felt on a surface is also great for releasing emotions. Using the needle can get slightly dangerous if you do not pay attention, but it is nothing that the kids are not able to do.

After mastering this technique, the kids got into the production mode. They made all sorts of different paintings and objects, from balls to strawberries and bunnies. Almost all the kids managed to make at least 3 different objects.

Felting continued long after the workshop ended. Irja kindly donated some of her materials and tools for VIVISTOP so kids could also learn this technique during Free Flow events.

Thank you Irja and Iida for making this workshop happen! To all the other creative parents, yes, all of you are creative too, contact us with your ideas. Sharing is especially rewarding to the presenter. Together we are building memories for the children.