10 Witch Hats for Halloween... Just Not Necessarily *This* Halloween

One improvement that I could easily make to my little hobby etsy shop is to anticipate seasonality.

Like, I'm literally the one who bitched every single year of my kid's Nutcracker years about why on earth the ballet department always acted like they had to reinvent the entire damn Nutcracker wheel every damn year. Y'all, you have done this thing before! Why is the children's dressing room never reserved and nobody has the elevator key and casting a dozen nine-year-olds in the same roles they held when they were eight takes three freaking weeks of daily emails saying that the casting will be out tomorrow? And yet here I am every year being all, "Oh, gorsh! Is Halloween month! Should I... make something Halloween for my etsy shop?" And then I have time to make maybe three things before Halloween is over.

Also me, sitting here on November 18 with nothing in my shop for Thanksgiving and nothing in my shop for Christmas

But you know what I DO have in my shop right now? The five handmade witch hats that I finished AFTER Halloween! The five that I managed to bust out before Halloween sold so quickly that I figured that this time I would get ahead of the game while I was thinking about it and my mind and my hands were already in witch hat mode.

I really like this hat that I fussy cut from a thrifted batik of the seven chakras:

I also got through quite a bit of previously thrifted formalwear for those pre-Halloween witch hats--

--as well as a successful experiment with facing a witch hat with burlap:

My big helper here just happened to be home for Fall Break right when I needed a witch hat model!

--but my absolute favorite hats, and the ones that I ended up making multiples of to get that jump on next Halloween, are these hats sewn from the last scraps of a vintage cutter quilt that I've had kicking around my fabric stash for over 15 years by now:

I'm a little sad to have used it all up with these hats, because I've never come across another old cutter quilt since, but I suppose that we mustn't hoard our resources, sigh.

It just sews up SO prettily!

These last four witch hats sewn from that vintage quilt are already listed in my Pumpkin+Bear etsy shop, because who am I to tell you no if you want to buy one in the off-season--

--but what I really should do, and what I am firmly telling myself TO do, is to sew a couple more hats from unique fabrics every month, so that by the time next autumn rolls around I'll be fully stocked with seasonal items.

But not this week. This week my goal is to figure out how to sew re-usable fabric chains, probably with Velcro fasteners, because I think it would make a really cool--and eco-friendly! And heirloom!--holiday decoration. And obviously I won't figure that out and have any sets finished until it's past time to reasonably decorate for Christmas, sooo... I guess I'm really committed to getting a jump on next year's holiday products!

P.S. Want to see what we're going to do with a bushel of apples, a gallon of cider, and two Jack-o-lantern pumpkins, one very large and one very weird? Follow along on my Craft Knife Facebook page, where cider cocktails and caramel apples are made, and teenagers are in charge of the applesauce!

I'm Now Selling Play Dough in Three Sizes and Ten Colors Because Decisions are Hard

I dunno, you guys. I already sell one-pound packages of homemade play dough, and it's awesome. One pound is a terrific amount of play dough for a kid. 

But then I needed to restock my one-pound containers, but when I went to the big supply store in the big city an hour away from here, which was a special trip that I planned specifically for this one errand, although of course I tacked on a trip to the Kurt Vonnegut museum and lunch at the hot pot/Korean barbecue place and then a quick run by World Market (I bough the ridiculously expensive Bonne Maman advent calendar that I do not need but I've literally been thinking about how I want one since this time last year so I just need to conserve some brain space in 2026, you know?) and Trader Joe's... I didn't remember which size container I needed. 

So I bought three different ones!

One of them did, indeed, hold the perfect one-pound amount of play dough, and as for the other two... well, I guess I offer play dough in 12 ounces, 16 ounces, and 20 ounces now!

The new containers are a LOT nicer than the old containers, too. I originally bought the old containers because I wanted something eco-friendly, and they were advertised as being made of a kind of corn-derived plastic that is also compostable. But the way you had to break the seal to open the container meant that they also weren't really re-usable, and I never had an indication of how many, if any, customers actually tried to compost them. 

These new containers are just regular plastic, but they ARE reusable, which honestly I think makes them even more eco-friendly than a single-use container, even if it's made from better plastic and you can compost it afterwards. 

Maybe this will be the encouragement I needed to also start offering sensory mix-ins, since I've now got so many sizes in play. How cool would these colors be with colored sand added?!?

Ooh, or maybe over Fall Break the kid can help me get started offering slime?

Until then, though, I've got seven witch hats all cut out and ready to be sewn, photographed, and listed--stay tuned!

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!

There's a New Play Dough Size in Town!

And by "town," I mean my Pumpkin+Bear etsy shop, of course.

I'm running out of my current stock of containers that I've been using for my 1-pound play dough listings for years, so the other day I bought some new containers that said they were 16 ounces. It turns out that either I don't know what 16 ounces is, OR that my play dough is so fluffy that it defies common standards of weight and measure, because these guys only hold TWELVE ounces of my super soft, super fluffy, dye- and fragrance-free homemade play dough!

Oh, well. Guess I've got a new Pumpkin+Bear listing, then!

You can still buy my play dough in its original 1-pound containers for a little longer, and at some point I'll get back to the big restaurant supply store to experiment with a new container, but I'll keep around these 12-ounce guys, too:

I do need to test how much of my dyed play dough will fit in these containers, though, yikes. My dyed play dough is EVEN FLUFFIER than my dye-free play dough!

P.S. Want to make my absolute best play dough yourself? Here's my recipe!

P.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!

March 2025 Pumpkin+Bear Updates: Now You, Too, Can Have a Quilted Flyers Logo Hoodie!

I really like making things in multiples--it's a great way to perfect techniques, and I enjoy the process of working out a best practice as I go.

The problem is that often, I'm the only one in the family who wants the thing I've just made, ahem. Why everybody else does not want their very own eclipse bunting or witch hat or quilted Flyers logo hoodie, I do not know, but it definitely hinders my preferred process.

Thank goodness, then, for my Pumpkin+Bear etsy shop!

I burned with desire to make a second quilted Flyers logo hoodie (as I was making mine, I had an idea for a better way to do the interfacing that I OBVIOUSLY needed to test out), so I bought a second thrift store hoodie, quilted a new Flyers logo to it--my newly improved process worked perfectly!--and you can now find it listed in my shop:

I used the exact same quilting cottons for this one as I did for my own quilted logo hoodie, but you can see that with this one, I got much less fraying on the edges, thanks to my improved interfacing technique: I interfaced the fabric BEFORE I put it through the Cricut, which had no problem cutting through the extra layer:

I really lucked out with this hoodie, too. I'm hoping that hoodies will be easier to find off-season in the thrift shops, but this was a winter find, and it's a terrific score! It's a thrifted, like-new GapFit XL with no visible wear or damage. It feels like a thick cotton sweatshirt fabric, but I'd be happily shocked if it was actually 100% cotton. The hoodie's measurements are as follows:

*Chest Circumference: 49"
*Circumference at Hem: 49"
*Top of the Shoulder to the Hem: 28"
*Armpit to the Hem: 18.5"
*Armpit to the Cuff: 20.5"


I washed the hoodie before I sewed onto it, but I didn't wash it afterwards, so the quilted Flyers logo is still super crisp and not yet fluffy and crinkly. I'm second-guessing myself a little about not washing it before I listed it, since the soft quilting-ness won't be visible until it's washed and so maybe that will surprise the buyer, but I DID mention it in the listing, and we all know how good buyers are about thoroughly reading the listings, right?

Ahem.

I really like the size of the logo compared to the size of the hoodie, but next I sort of want to experiment with making a different-sized quilted hoodie, so I need to come to some sort of percentage calculation of logo size compared to hoodie front:

That can be for another time, though, because during the kids' Spring Break shopping I thrifted another hoodie just for me, so now I can figure out how to make a quilted Blue Jackets logo!

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!

Eighteen Eclipse Buntings in Thirty Days

Because it's very important to teenagers that you stay humble, my own teenager was quick to inform me that, despite the unexpected and fleeting popularity of my handmade eclipse buntings in my Pumpkin+Bear etsy shop, I was not, and likely never would be, "viral."

Whatever. I still enjoyed my brief moment in the #girlboss sun!

I also finally finished The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel while I sewed, ending up with exactly 8 minutes left in the series finale at the moment that I cut the last thread on my last bunting, so that's yet another big accomplishment.

Now I'm watching that Duggar documentary series while I sew marble maze fidgets, and hoo-boy is THAT a wild ride! I did watch that show back in the day, when I was more entertained by secondhand cringe than I am now, although my REAL secondhand cringe favorite was Jon and Kate + 8. I could still happily endlessly chew over every single one of those episodes, snarking away about all the horrible adults. Remember the time that the family got a free trip to Disney World and then they got free ice cream and Kate wouldn't let the kids eat it? Or when they got the free trip to the Crayola Crayon hands-on place and she wouldn't let them do most of the activities? I'm STILL made on the kids' behalf!

I definitely didn't do any of the things that I probably should have done when blessed with a suddenly popular (not viral! Never say viral, at least not to a teenager!) listing. I'm pretty sure I should have done... something to further market or build on or... something. So maybe I didn't exactly #girlboss after all, lol. Oh, well! I mostly gave up my #handmade #girlboss dreams back when I gave up craft fairs.

Sewing all those bunting orders was really fun while it lasted, though! 

P.S. I actually wrote a tutorial for this bunting, so you can make your own!

P.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!

Three New Ballet Skirts, or, It's So Fun To Sew with Slippery Fabrics /s

 

The world of children's ballet is a Whole Thing, y'all. And I'm not even talking about the body politics or the stresses of casting or the superb posture training. My teenager has danced in the same pre-college ballet program since the age of approximately four, and so you'd think the uniform would be pretty standard. Leotard, tights, and shoes, and you can even skip the tights if you're dancing Russian-style.

But no. Every year, and sometimes every semester, is just a new, annoying way to spend my money because these people cannot seem to make up their minds about how they'd like the children to dress! At one point in time, several ages wore the same leotard color, so that switching to a new leo color was a momentous achievement. Then they decided that every level should have its own color. Annoying to buy all new leotards each year, but at least there was something of a resale market. Then they decided that kids could only wear camisole-style leotards, so we all had to go buy new ones. Then they kept everything the same for a year, which was cool, but in the last month of classes decided that the kids should wear a completely different color of leotard and ballet skirt just for the recital--here, by the way, is that white leotard and skirt that my kid wore exactly once. Then they decided that you could wear any style of leotard you wanted as long it was the right color, but they had two different levels wearing two different colors of green, and do you know how hard it is to tell online if a leotard is more mint green or forest green (this one is neither mint NOR forest, it was determined)? And don't even get me started about the level that had to wear "grey"--Friends, there are a lot of greys in the world! Then there was a year in which they did uniform by ages but grouped several ages into a single class, and that's how we discovered that my teenager is the only teenager exactly her age in the program, because she got to be the only black leotard in a sea of burgundy, and guess how much she did not love that.

Over the years we've gone from kids can wear ballet skirts to every class (everyone bought SO MANY skirts) to kids can never wear them ever (after, of course, everyone had bought and owned and loved 4-6 different skirts) to now kids can wear them on Saturdays. I think. For now.

My teenager is, as you might imagine if you've ever known somebody who submitted daily to a strict dress code, thrilled by the upcoming Ballet Skirt Saturdays. Because I can never just buy something and be done with it, I found this pattern for an asymmetrical SAB-style ballet skirt from DsSewingPatterns on etsy, ran it by the teenager, she approved, and then I bought it and we went fabric shopping.

Because fabric shopping is the funnest part!

Four-way stretch isn't really my jam, nor is sewing thin, slippery mesh and tulle, but the teenager had a fabulous time picking out a few fabrics to try, and she was so excited to have me sew them up for her that she literally stood next to the table as I worked, just, like, watching me stitch while listening to my Dolls of Our Lives podcast. I felt very attended to! 

Luna helped, too:

Fortunately, this is one of the best, easiest, and most straightforward patterns I've ever used. The magic is in the cut, which, as you can see if you look closely at the template below, IS asymmetrical!

This means that you can wear it truly asymmetrical, with one side longer, or the way my teenager likes it, with the longer part at the booty for a little more coverage.

The photo below is technically my muslin, although I have a Depression-era fear and loathing (thanks, Mamma and Pappa!) of wasting fabric, so I got the teenager to choose something on clearance that she would still reluctantly wear. She's got those October Saturdays pinned down now!

I did alter the pattern quite a bit in length after sewing this muslin, which is why you should always sew a muslin. Fortunately, the saving grace of this thin, slippery, asshole fabric is that at least it doesn't ravel, so I could just trim the bottom to my preferred length and didn't even have to hem it, hallelujah.

That spiderweb fabric also worked out perfectly when turned inside-out to make the black waistband on this, the most glorious of all ballet skirts:

My teenager and I are absolutely enamored with this skirt. To be honest, she's probably not gonna wear any of the others as long as this one is around. It's a sheer black mesh with these flowers and sequins appliqued on it, and it. Is. Stunning. Now imagine it in motion!

I'm just going to show you a few more close-up photos of it, I'm so proud of it:

Y'all aren't going to believe this, but over winter break the pre-college ballet department reorganized the levels AGAIN, so after having all the kids in my kid's class wearing black leotards all semester, even the ones who were technically supposed to wear burgundy, and me thinking that my kid was going to be wearing black leotards six days a week for the next two years and therefore buying her even more black leotards for Christmas, now they've decided that everyone should go back to... BURGUNDY. You know, the color that LITERALLY NOBODY WORE LAST SEMESTER. BECAUSE THEY WERE ALL WEARING BLACK. A CLASS FULL OF KIDS WHO NOW OWN SEVERAL BLACK LEOTARDS THAT FIT, AND THEY WANT THEM TO BUY SIX DAYS' WORTH OF BURGUNDY LEOTARDS INSTEAD. JUST FOR THE SECOND SEMESTER OF THE EXACT SAME CLASS FULL OF THE EXACT SAME CHILDREN.

I participated in the Great Burgundy Leotard Scramble of 2019, and I am not going back to that nightmare scenario of battling every other parent in the class for the, like, five burgundy leotards, total, that exist in the world--burgundy is not a popular leotard color for the ballet world at large!!! They can put whatever they want on their dress code, but they have pushed me, personally, too far. I bought my teenager a shit ton of black leotards back in August, and a shit ton more black leotards over Christmas, and two shit tons of black leotards is what she will be wearing to class next semester whether they like it or not. 

Sigh. Do you want to make bets on how many classes until I cave?

My Latest over at Pumpkin+Bear: The Cutest Custom-Color Doll Masks

Even after I stopped selling real-person fabric masks in my Pumpkin+Bear etsy shop (I switched the kids and I over to these, and Matt prefers this style in whatever brand is cheapest), I keep making and selling doll masks, because:

1. People still want to buy them from me, and I do enjoy exchanging my goods and services for currency.
2. Even though I think a lot of people have also switched to high-quality manufactured masks, if you want a mask for your doll, you're still going to need someone to make it for you by hand. 
3. They're ADORABLE.

Number 3, of course, is the most important reason. 

Here's a cute matching set that I made a few weeks ago:

And here's my latest order of custom-color doll masks! My favorite part of making these masks is seeing what color combinations people choose. This particular customer, for instance, chose these fabrics--

--along with these ties:

And when I sewed them together in the requested combinations, I got these adorable doll masks!

That watermelon mask is the cutest mask that currently exists in the world. 

And here's how I package my masks to go out and about into that world!

If you are a sewer, yourself, I do have the entire doll mask tutorial for free on my blog. It's the responsibility of all of us to keep our dolls healthy!

I've gotten out of the habit of sewing matching items for my own kids' American Girl dolls, since I'm the only one who plays with them these days (ahem), but I'm pretty sure that I DO need to make another couple of watermelon doll masks.

And obviously, if I'm going to make watermelon doll masks, I clearly have to make both dolls entire watermelon outfits to match!

Tutorial: DIY Watercolor Business Cards

This tutorial was originally posted in Crafting a Green World back in 2017.

 I have a small handmade business, and it's important to me to use handmade, eco-friendly business cards for it. 

That doesn't mean that I LIKE to make business cards--it's tedious, you have to make, like, a thousand at a time, and all you're going to do is give them away so you can't even enjoy them AND you have to go and make a thousand more, sigh... 

 So I am a huge fan of handmade business cards that take as little time as possible to make. And these watercolor business cards may be the quickest! I cheated a little with these cards, as I usually prefer to hand-cut my business cards from recycled cardboard, such as cardboard food packaging or old record album covers. But I scored a half-used stash of these Avery business card sheets (thank you, Freecycle!), and the fact that these cards are white, for a change, is what makes this tutorial work. 

 To make your own watercolor business cards, you will need: 

  white heavy cardstock or business card printer sheets. If you don't mind seeking out one store-bought supply, these printer sheets made for business cards are the poop! Get the kind that are uncoated and come away with clean edges, and your life will be so easy. Otherwise, look for a super-heavy cardstock or upcycle some thin cardboard that's been bleached white. 

  watercolors. You can use solid watercolor palettes and a paintbrush, but in these pics I'm using liquid watercolors, both in miniature spritz bottles and with eyedroppers. Yes, we ARE still using this DIY liquid watercolor spray paint that I first set up for my kids six years ago! 

  printed or stamped business card information. You could print your business card info onto the back of your sheets, but I use this customizable stamp set for all of my handmade business cards. 

 1. Watercolor your business cards. I spritzed a little paint onto my business card sheets as a background, then used an eyedropper to add more drops of color. I let some colors bleed into each other, and I inclined some of the pages so that the colors would run. Just go for randomness and let the chaos take control! My darker colors, when dropped heavily, left a very light shadow on the backside, where I'm going to put my business information. I like this effect, as it carries over the watercolor theme, but if you're using a different type of paper than I am, you might want to test it first to see how much color the backside shows. As you're working, you're going to think that what you're doing does NOT look cute. Just carry on--I promise it'll look cuter in a minute! Leave the pages to dry. 

 2 Seal the card fronts (optional). If you're going to use these cards at craft fairs or otherwise out and about, give them a quick coat of your clear sealant of choice, and let them dry. Watercolor is water-soluble (duh!), so you wouldn't want a customer to pick up your business card, walk out into the rain, and then get paint all over their hands. 

3. Separate the business cards. Don't they look a LOT cuter now? The chaos of the random watercoloring translates very well to a small canvas. I especially like how the color carries over to the edge of the cards, so that they look pretty even from the side. 

 4. Add your business information. If you didn't print your business information onto the printer sheet, then add it on now to the backside of the cards. This leaves the front side as its own miniature work of abstract art!