[Applause] [Applause] everybody it's CJ from my let my kids blog and today I'm going to show you how to make a weighted vest the kindergarten teacher at our school I had mentioned that she wouldn't like to have a weighted vest in her classroom as she thought many of her students could benefit from it but there was no room in the budget they start at $60 and go up from there so I thought I'd take a little bit of time this weekend and make one to give to her when school starts again and I'll show you step-by-step pictures along the way on how to do it so I picked up this vest on Amazon I chose fleece because it's soft and most kids like fleece now this is gonna be used by multiple students so instead of just making it specifically for a boy or a girl or making it specific weighted I'm gonna make it so she can use it for any of her students so what I intend to do is right here along the bottom I'm gonna sew a piece of matching felt along the bottom there so I'm gonna stitch it on here and then I'm gonna sew lines down like this and make four or five pockets I'm not sure how many pockets I'm going to make yet and then I am going to make a little weighted a sizes because I want this people to work for anybody so these are called poly pellets and some of times they're clear sometimes they're black sometimes they're way there are all different colors different sizes and shapes and they're just a little piece it can fill into a fabric bag to make different weights add some batting to it so it's soft and comfortable for the kids and I'm gonna make each of these pocket or each of these weighted bags with different color fabrics and different weights so one of them is gonna be one pound one of them is gonna be 0.5 pounds so the teacher can customize this to fit well for the student the student can pick out their favorite color a weighted bag so it'll be not only fun but it'll be exciting and then because I don't want the kids playing with the weighted bags while they're wearing it I have this awesome velcro that I picked up that is sticky bag for fabric so I don't actually have to stitch it on because if I stitched it on I'd have a bunch of stitching back here and I don't want that but within 24 hours it's yes sticks and it's washable and it goes good for fabric so I'm really excited about that so I'm gonna put a little bit of velcro on here and a little bit on this side and that way once the weighted bags are inserted we're gonna be able to have them on there I'm having in there good and then I'm also going to up here at the top I'm gonna make small weighted bags that can be put on their shoulder that are comfortable and maybe just half a pound each so they have weight on top and on on the back two weighted vests can help students to feel more comfortable if they're feeling anxious in the situation or it can help them to concentrate I'm really excited to get at the kindergarten teacher and I can't wait to start making it so stick around and I'll show you every step of the way the first step in making the vest is to determine how long of a piece of felt I need to make the pockets so I folded the vest down like this so it would make this part where the straight and put it right here up against the zipper and then over to here so I have about 31 inches I also decided that I wanted my pocket holders to be about 7 inches long so I took my piece of felt and I cut it at about 8 and a half inches so I could fold this over and have really nice seam along the bottom and then fold this over on the top stitch it up and have a nice clean seam along the top so I'm going to go ahead and get those seams have just finished stitching along the top of my piece of felt this is I did this darker thread because I wanted to be able to make sure you could really see the things I was sewing if I was type typically doing this I would have chosen a blue or clear thread I'm a big fan of clear thread but I might notice seat so because of that I made a little zig-zag pattern but you could use a straight stitch or organ kind of stitch that you want to depending on your machine desk so this part is going to go on here and it won't be stitched on this is where I'm going to make the lines going down next thing I'm going to do is fold this over and I'm going to stitch it actually onto the bottom of the vest and at the sides on as well I am ready to stitch on these pockets this large pocket as you can tell I folded the fabric a little bit so I could have a nice clean line I did it right there and instead of sewing along the bottom because this is already really thick and I don't want to damage my machine or break my needle I'm gonna stitch right along the top I also folded this so it would have a clean seam running outside and the bottom has a little more stretch than the top so I had to cut it kind of at an angle instead that's you can kind of see from here that's the excess that I cut off it was wider at the top and a little thinner at the bottom um so what I'm gonna do is I'm just gonna put this on my machine and stitch all the way across turning it and up to the top there [Applause] all right so I have this ditched on it's essentially just one really big pocket at this point I stitched around the sides here you can tell it's not terribly noticeable from the back you can see it but it doesn't look too bad even using the darker thread I bet with similar color thread to be barely able to notice at all so I decided that I was going to do if this is approximately thirty inches across I decided I'd do about pockets that were six inches wide mostly because the pocket is right here on this side and I don't want to stitch over at the pocket I want the pockets usable so I did six inches and another six inches and other six inches and other six inches and I'm just gonna sew straight down and make these pockets and then we'll get started on making the weighted thanks for them all right so I stitched down here like this using a fabric marker would be really helpful in the situation where some fabric chalk if you don't have either of those you can just kind of eyeball it which is what I did so what I do is before I start sewing I put the presser foot down put the needle in because it's a little thicker fabric we kind of have to sewing machine noises to senior confidence and it is by far my favorite time machine and never hats are sewn I'm just gonna trim all of the strings from the back and the front of the vest now it is time to make the weighted bags I've got my pockets are approximately six inches wide by 7 inches long I mean I want them to fit kind of snug but not so tight that it's a pain to get in so I'm probably gonna make them five-and-a-half five to five and a half by six and a half or so that way they can slide in have a little room but they're not so big that they're flopping around and I'll show you how to do that to make things simpler I took a piece of cardboard and I cut it out the size of the pocket and this little I mean just a small seam allowance all the way around so I know it'll fit in there pretty good now what I'm going to do and I'm cut out squares so I can make the weighted base you so I finished cutting out the fabric for the bags I'm gonna do my left one side I cut on a fold so it will have one less than two stitch and then the final thing I have to cut out is going to I took the remainder of the felt and the flannel and I'm going to make it so we can have some up here so when it's on it'll have weight going down this side and weight going down that side it'll be the velcro will be stitched or right here so they can take it on and off I mean this is completely washable so it'll be really easy even the bags themselves the way the bags are washable but chances are those won't get dirty but this might so I want to make it really user friendly for the team now I'm ready to sew the pocket so what I did is I took the fabric from that direction and I turned it right sides together that means you take the fabric the colored part of the fabric the design part and put it on top of each other fold it in half and then I take the very top part and fold it over on top of this so it'll have a nice clean easy seam at the top I'm gonna stitch down here stitch across here flip it inside out and now [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] I cut the piece of this sheet batting about two pieces actually and I put it inside my right sided out pocket and now I'm just going to fill it up [Applause] the first bag has been so and the thing you want to do is a lot of shake it love it and make sure nothing's gonna fall out last thing you want is an exploded weighted back bag and then you'll want to trim all the edges and do the rest of them [Applause] I have the first shoulder pocket done the way it's gonna fit on here I so two lines there so b-flat and I'll and I'll use some velcro some of the non sewing sticky back velcro that's made for fabric and I'll put it right there and then these will be removable so it'll be easy for the teacher to wash I have all the weighted bags down and they're tucked inside the vest I have them different way it's one pound half a pound and these are just a little under half a pound as well for the shoulders so what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna take my no-sew velcro that's made specifically for fabric and I'm gonna stick them on the places I want to so I put the the sides together so they'd be even and I'm just gonna put them right there right there and then I'm gonna do the same thing for here I'm gonna peel it off the sticky put them on and put them and press them down and then I'm gonna give him 24 hours before I pull them apart so again I'm gonna just rip off the paper put them on and then let it sit for 24 hours and then it should be good to go with no soul [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] [Applause]