Sometimes the Care Packages are Blue

Do not even try to imagine how tickled I was when I figured out I could send each of my kids a corny, pun-themed care package that matched the color of the college merch that I could make for them, because your imagination will not even come close to how tickled I actually was.

The big kid's first care package this year (We al-RED-y miss you!) contained not just Twizzlers and Pringles but a decorative pillow for her apartment couch complete with a handmade appliqued red and white school logo on it. The little kid's care package, however, looked like this:

--and in it she got cookies and cream Pocky, seaweed snacks, blue shark gummies, and the result of a lot of careful fussy cutting with my Cricut, a lot of careful applique--

--and then a lot more of even more careful applique on top of it:

Because I always wanted more daughters and because this kid and her freshman year roommates are still as close as puppies in a pile, I obviously thrifted three hoodies and made three versions of the school applique so that they could each have one.

Two sets of applique are on these sort of off-white hoodies--and honestly, if you're buying hoodies brand-new you're playing a sucker's game, because there are five billion like-new hoodies out there in the thrift stores to be had for just a few bucks each--

The loose threads are a feature, not a bug. I was going for the raw edge look, but I also interfaced the snot out of every piece so nothing is going nowhere, fingers crossed and knock on wood.

--but my own girl is still going hard on the mostly black wardrobe (I suppose that on a granular level it's a very far cry from her preschool years, when she insisted upon wearing only a succession of thrifted party dresses, but since her taste in her wardrobe is still exactly that specific I kind of see it as overall pretty much the same thing), and so whenever I make them their triplet gifts, it's always two creams or pastels and one emo black:

She can just tell her classmates that she's embodying Lantern Night every night!

But an outfit for her first May Day? Now THAT was a pickle to figure out...

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!