From happiness, of course! Because LOOK at it!
This pillow was a birthday present for my niece, who is at the perfect age for rainbow unicorns, and whose bedroom, when I visited this summer, looked like a rainbow unicorn threw up all over it, but in, like, the best of ways.
My bedroom looks like a 1980s yard sale had a fight with a tornado and they both took turns throwing up afterwards. I should dust, and I really should declutter.
So I knew I wanted to sew the kid something rainbow unicorn (I got the feeling from looking at her bedroom that anything from Disney or having to do with construction equipment would also work, but I was really personally feeling the rainbow unicorn vibes), but it took a while to settle on what I wanted to make. Maybe a little unicorn stuffie with a rainbow yarn mane? A much bigger unicorn stuffie with a tubby little tummy VERY stuffed with fluffies? This hat is stinking adorable, but I JUST finished using up almost all the fleece in my fabric stash and I loathe the idea of collecting more. I didn't feel like learning paper piecing for this project, but it was seriously getting on my nerves that all the paper piecing rainbow unicorn projects were so pretty!
I kept coming back to this Lisa the Unicorn quilt block pattern, and eventually I convinced myself that it wouldn't be as tricky to piece as it looked, and that its giant (26"x26"!) size would work as a giant decorative pillow after the big kid pointed out that this is literally the standard Euro pillow size that she's used on her bed for years and the last time I bought her a new pillow didn't I bitch that I could only buy them in packs of two and so I'd just have a second big-ass pillow kicking around my linen closet for years on end?
My memory is NOT a steel trap, but I do tend to at least vaguely recall my bitchiest moments, so I did sort of remember the entire bitchfest that was shopping for the kid's first college stuff. I checked Amazon, and indeed, back in 2022, just in time for college dorm shopping, I did buy two ridiculously big-ass 26"x26" pillows (See? I even remember the content of my bitching!), and when I dug back into the dark depths of my linen closet I DID find a brand-new 26"x26" pillow insert still in its packaging. I also found a brand-new throw pillow insert in a packaging meant for two that I have NO memory of what I could have possibly done with the first pillow, but now I can make the big kid a cute throw pillow cover for the couch in her college apartment, and omg I have so much room in my linen closet!
I had a LOT of help picking out the rainbow unicorn colors of the mane--
--and I think this is the first project in which I've actually had to label all my pieces to keep them straight:
Although I'm sure it actually didn't, it felt like cutting out all the pieces took a LOT longer than it did to sew them all together. The piecing felt like it went really quickly, and it came together so nicely!
It took long enough, though, that while I worked I watched almost the entire first season of Vikings, before deciding I didn't really like it all that much and bailed, so then I rediscovered a long-ago old favorite, the Double Love podcast, so I sewed all the rest of my unicorn listening to Jessica's machinations and Elizabeth's justifiable dithering over whether or not she actually even likes Todd:
Just between us, Todd deserves better, and I don't even like him!
Fortunately, it was summer when I sewed this, so I had my living captives adult children home and could make them come admire every new part I pieced. It just kept getting cuter and cuter!
Here it is completely pieced and ready to quilt! I was stoked to use stash batting leftover from my flannel foster kid quilt, but ugh, I really need to find a nice, big bolt of a good cotton-poly blend batting that I can just pull from forever. Lmk if you ever run across a good sale!
And here she is all quilted and ready to be sewn into a pillow cover! I don't like the look of a lot of quilting, but just between us I probably should have put at least one more line of quilting, maybe some stitch in the ditch, in the unicorn's face. Hopefully it won't fall apart after a few washes...
Every summer, a few random and stupid things around our house break, and it always takes us FOREVER to fix them. One year, it was the dryer. One year, it was the oven. One memorable year, it was the entire fucking roof. We've had summers of multi-day power outages and summers in which one car or another just would not stay working. Anyway, this summer it's the riding lawnmower AND the dryer. Working in concert and only spending about twice as much money as we probably needed to, my partner and I finally got the riding lawnmower fixed-ish, provided you agree that stripping a couple of wires, twisting them together, and wrapping the whole thing in electric tape is "fixed," but guess what still isn't working?
Tbh I'm not personally even that mad because hanging laundry to dry is eco-friendly and makes it smell awesome, but the kids were beyond over it by the end of the summer, and probably the only kids at their colleges excited to get back to school so they could do laundry.
At some point before the weather really kicks in I'm going to have to buckle down and watch one thousand How To Repair Your Electric Dryer YouTube videos, but that day was not this day, and so Lisa the Rainbow Unicorn got to dry prettily on a line in my front yard:
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| My partner didn't know this so you might not either, but quilting is supposed to be wrinkly and scrunchy after the first wash. Those scrunches are what make it comfy! |
And then she got to put her pillow on and pose prettily in that same front yard!
I am so pleased with how she turned out! The instructions were, indeed, complicated, and I highlighted a lot and checked steps off as I completed them, but if you followed them carefully, nearly everything comes out perfectly and all your seams line up just where they should.
I'd like to make another Lisa the Unicorn as a wall hanging, perhaps with a colorway of blacks and greys, but that's currently pretty far down my list. First I've got to embellish hoodies with the name of the kid's school done in patchwork for her and her best college buddies, then make the other kid a throw pillow, then I need some new pajama pants since that's all I seem to wear these days so I might as well lean into it, and then this ghost patchwork quilt is honest to god SHOUTING my name at me, and then by that time I'll probably have thrifted a couple more hoodies that I can put patchwork ghosts on, too, and by that time I'll need to be thinking about sewing Christmas presents for people.
P.S. Want to follow along with my craft projects, books I'm reading, road trips to weird old cemeteries, looming mid-life crisis, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!
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