Stuffed Animal Vet Clinic

One of the bonuses of being able to sew is that you can repair stuff.  Sewing is super useful!  Hosting a Stuffed Animal Vet Clinic at your school or community allows young sewers to use their sewing skills to help others while repairing loved stuffies.  I believe it's a much needed community service project!  Little Stuffed Animal Vet Clinics should start popping up all over.  But I digress.....

This month, Sewing Club hosted a Stuffed Animal Vet Clinic for our school.  We collected more than 30 injured stuffies and restored them back to life. The kids were so proud and really took their time with the repairs.  Some repairs required good problem solving skills and even teamwork.

Thinking about hosting your own Vet Clinic?  Here are some tips:
*Get the word out!  Let people know what you're doing a few days in advance.  Kid-made signs and announcements are the best!

*Decorate a collection box.  We placed cardboard animal carriers around the school to collect the stuffies, but decorated cardboard boxes would work too. Limit collection to 1 or 2 days before the event.

*Use tags or tape to ID the stuffies. For ours, we made sure we had the owner's name and classroom teacher so that they could be returned.  Shipping tags from an office supply store work well.

*Gather vet supplies: You'll want to make sure you have plenty of brown, black, and white thread on hand along with a variety of colors. You might also need some stuffing and perhaps some felt to make prosthetics. (yes, you read that right!)

*If time allows, add an extra.  We had the vets right a quick note on the back of the tag and make a fabric bandage or bandanna for the stuffie.

*Return repaired stuffies to their owners right away!

Hope you're inspired to host your own Stuffed Animal Vet Clinic!  Sewing School has more tips for repairing injured animals.