Because Protesting a Fascist Government Is No Fun If Your Ears Are Cold

Or, I dunno, I just wanted to make a couple of hats.

I don't have a lot of fleece left in my fabric stash, because it picks up pet hair like CRAZY and is therefore unsuited to a home like mine, ahem, but I learned a new method of making fleece hats that are rounder, and therefore more comfortable, than the method I've previously used, so by digging through every piece of fabric I own I was able to scrounge up juuuuust enough fleece to make two new hats for my college kids.

But what I really wanted to experiment with regarding these hats is figuring out how to embellish them with fleece-on-fleece applique!

Thanks to my Cricut, cutting out the fleece applique was actually the easiest part:

That line of fuzz below the letters is where the sheet of fleece slightly overlapped the transfer tape. Without that tape, that whole section of mat would look like that!

I also recently learned that the secret trick to cutting fabric--especially fleece and felt!--without ruining your cutting mat with fuzz is to use cheap transfer tape. It's essentially a giant roll of Scotch tape, and it's meant for use with vinyl, but if you put it smooth side down on the mat and burnish the fabric onto the sticky side, it works a treat at holding the fabric perfectly for the cuts, then you can peel it off and everything stays tidy and clean!

So tidy:

Fleece-on-fleece is the easiest applique in the world to glue baste, because it will stick forever with just a glue stick, but it is the worst applique in the world to figure out how to actually, you know, SEW IT. It's got enough loft that stitches really show, and it's slightly stretchy, so you always have to worry about everything staying un-wonkified. Its saving grace is that it doesn't fray, so at least you don't have to satin stitch the damn thing, but I tried two different methods on two different hats, and I'm not happy with either of them.

I tried a simple zigzag on the little kid's hat, and honestly I thought this was going to turn out great--

--but I do not love the result:

It would be fine if the stitches didn't have so much... dimensionality? I guess? But at least it's consistent, so I can pretend that it was a design choice!

I hand-stitched the big kid's hat with a running stitch, and although I still don't love it--and I don't love how long it took--I actually like the end result a LOT better:

The stitches still show some depth, but hand-stitching allowed me to adjust the thread tension enough to keep it a bit at bay, at least, and if nothing else, the running stitch means that there are far fewer stitches involved.

At least the back side of all that stitching gets well hidden inside the fleece hat sandwich:

This four-corners business is what I wanted to try. I think it looks stupid with all the corners poked out, but if you keep the corners tucked in--

--I think the hat looks super cute, and it DOES fit very comfortably!

Two hats and one snowstorm later--

--and the kids' Valentine's Day care packages, complete with snuggly warm hats to wear to all the various and sundry protests that college students attend (college students attend a LOT of protests!) were ready to mail!

The secret trick to college student care packages?

Snacks. Lots and lots of snacks.

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In Which I Violate the IP of My Kid's College To Make Her Custom Merch

So yes, I DID violate the IP of the kid's college by recreating their school logo in fabric and appliqueing it to a decorative pillowcase, buuuuuut I also own several pieces of properly licensed merchandise purchased from the school bookstore, AND by the time she graduates I'll have paid the school far more than my own personal net worth in tuition.

So let's just call it fair, yes?

I cut and assembled the patchwork applique D during my mending group's monthly volunteer day at our local public library, in between mending holes in several pairs of leggings, teaching a child a couple of different hand-sewing stitches, and patching holes and rips in what I believe to be every pair of ripped jeans in the county:

I finished satin stitching the pieces of the D later that night at home, forgetting that I still had a heavy-duty jeans needle installed in my sewing machine until I was halfway done so that now I'm rightfully paranoid that the pillowcase is going to rip at the edges of the satin stitching, sigh:

The stitching looks so tidy and the colors are well-matched, though! And if the fabric does split where the heavy-duty needle was punching through it, well... the kid knows when and where our local public library's Mending Day happens!

I also made the envelope-back pillowcase from scratch:

I perhaps shouldn't have trusted the label on the pillow form that indicated that it was a perfect square, 16"x16". I crafted my pillowcase to match, and the vertical measurement of the finished product seems to agree with the label, but the horizontal measurement clearly does not. Look how snug it is at the sides, dang it!

Whatever. Maybe it just needs to be punched some more to redistribute the stuffing... as long as that doesn't cause the fabric to rip at the satin stitching.

Gentle punching, then.

On the long drive to drop the younger kid off at school this August, I amused everyone in the car by reading them posts from the various college parent Facebook groups that I lurk in. There are a LOT of moms crashing out on public Facebook groups about their crippling grief and loneliness, y'all. And there are a LOT of college freshmen, apparently, calling their parents crying and asking to come home before their parents can even finish driving back after dropping them off. One mom reported that her daughter called an Uber and came knocking on their hotel room door in the middle of the night and telling them she didn't want to stay. Like, Baby, they JUST dropped you off! Unless your roommates are actively worshipping Satan, and by that I mean not just putting on the robes and painting the pentagrams and lighting the black candles but, like, actually calling up a physical incarnation of the Prince of Darkness himself and offering you to him as his bride, you really need to sit with your discomfort for at least a semester. And if you can hold out for one semester, see if you can try for two. 

Honestly, even if the kid's entire college looked exactly like that abbey from The Nun, I'd still be all, "Honey, you can stick out a demon nun for four years. She's the leading researcher in her field! See if you can TA for her and get her to write you a recommendation letter for your grad school application."

Anyway, all that to say that I am now following a Facebook group devoted to sending themed care packages with punny slogans to one's college kid:

And along with the Twizzlers, spiced apple foaming hand soap, snack-sized Pringles, and Stranger Things-themed Chips Ahoy cookies, a decorative pillow with a half-red school logo fit in just perfectly!

Now to figure out what pun I want to use for this month's Halloween-themed care package...

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!