I Want To Smoosh This Rainbow Unicorn Pillow Into My Face While I Scream

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:

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!

The Spring and Summer of the Puff Quilt

Tbh, I'm not sure if the kid really even wanted a puff quilt that much, ahem, or if she was just expressing admiration for them and then I jumped on it because it looked like a cool thing to make.

Oh, well, because she's got one now!

This puff quilt has been THE project of half the spring and most of the summer. In and around getting the kids settled back home and enjoying them as hard as I can, taking little trips here and there, dealing with the never-ending brokenness of the lawnmower (first it was the drive belt, which cost so much and took so long to have repaired that when the mower immediately broke again I spent another full week messing with it myself and busting all my knuckles in the process before realizing the solenoid ground wire had corroded, and then as soon as my really shitty fix for that worked the mower belt fell off, and when my partner was trying to put that back in place he realized that actually the entire mower deck was rusted through so badly that one of the mowing blades was literally just falling off of it, and we messed around on Facebook Marketplace for a while trying to find another 42" mower deck but everyone else's is also rusted to hell and back, so now we've found a local shop that claims it'll weld a repair for us so wish us luck that maybe next week we'll get to mow our lawn for the second time this summer!), and doing all my regular work and leisure, I have been sewing puffs.

When I saw people showing off their puff quilts online, I thought it looked like an easy make, and it was pretty easy: cut 616 4" backing squares, cut 616 4.5" front squares, sew them together on three sides with a scant 1/4" seam, piece them row by row with a proper 1/4" seam, stuffing them as you go, back the quilt top and tie it with 566 knots, then double-fold the backing around the edges to make a binding and edge stitch that all the way around. 

But DUDE. It is TEDIOUS! You definitely need yourself a good show with lots of seasons that you can burn through while you work!

Even only partially complete, though, it always looked so pretty, and I loved laying it out every day to see my progress:

I also accidentally discovered a terrific trick to keep wrinkles out of my backing: after pinning across the center of the quilt+backing, I draped it across our big family room table so I could tie it, and the weight of the quilt hanging down from each side kept that backing the smoothest that I've ever gotten it!

Or maybe it's just because there was constantly a cat holding it down...

It turns out that all the pets go CRAZY for a puff quilt!

It took another nearly full week to get the quilt tied, and that's with me teaching the technique to everyone in the family and forcing them to spend part of every evening helping me. We'd play a podcast or set up a movie, and then we'd just sit around the table and tie our puffs!

At one point, with all of us sitting around the table with our embroidery floss and needles, working away, one of the kids grinned at me and said, "Look at us all sitting around the table doing something together. This is your dream come true!"

And of course she's right, lol. I spend half our time together martialing everyone into some kind of family activity or other, like one of those Australian cattle dogs incorporated into a family, not a farm, who keeps trying to herd the kids and follow the parents to the bathroom. I'm constantly the one saying, "Let's have a movie night," "Let's all pick a theme and cook a themed dinner together," "Let's go see how many ice cream places there are in town," "Let's go hike down the creek and fill Dad's backpack with geodes," etc. I know it must get old, especially during these between-college summers when I'm always thinking about how my time with them is so precious, but I will never be sorry that my children are so confident about my desire to spend time with them that they can turn it into a family joke. 

I will also never be sorry that my children know that I will happily spend most of the summer sewing them the on-trend novelty quilt that they expressed a desire for, and that when it's done we'll all laugh that it accidentally turned out WAY larger and WAY heavier than I thought it would and what on earth is the kid actually going to do with it, but also it's about a thousand times comfier than we thought it would be and currently it lives on the couch and everyone is obsessed with it.

I still think the pets love it the most, though!

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!

I Sewed a Quilt for a Foster Kid. I Hope They Like Flannel!

Y'all might remember when oh, so long ago, I discovered that the kid that I never could keep pants on really liked the feel of flannel, so I bought allllllll the flannel on clearance at Joann's and sewed her soooooooo many pairs of flannel pants. 

Girl wore those flannel jammies in every wild print and pattern for YEARS, and honestly I don't remember if she, herself, eventually got tired of them or if it was me that eventually got tired enough of them to sneak them out of her wardrobe. But to this day, my fabric stash contains the odd bits and bobs of that long-ago flannel: there's a horse print in there somewhere, a dinosaur print (of course!), and, until very recently, a cute print of cars and trucks on a white background. 

But no more do I have any cute--but babyish!--cars and trucks flannel in my stash, for now every single scrap exists in this equally cute--and appropriately babyish!--flannel quilt that I'm donating to Comfort Cases through sewist Stacey Lee's 2025 Quilt Donation Drive.

I wanted a simple pattern, so I decided to make it all 6" triangles. I cut every triangle I could out of the cars and trucks flannel, and then went looking for any other flannel I had that would match it, and I cut all that up, too.

I almost made it!

I'd already planned to buy new flannel for the back of the quilt, so I cut the final six triangles from that, and one of the better things about having a graphic designer in the family is that I could give him all my triangles and the dimensions I wanted, and he was the one who fussed them all around until he achieved a pleasingly symmetrical design:

Without the kids at home I've gotten into the habit of using the family room floorspace to lay out my quilts. But of course, it was never the kids who messed up my quilts when I was laying them out. Look, for instance, at this charming gentleman:

Such a sweet and innocent little guy. Clearly butter would not melt in his mouth. And yet how, then, do you suppose that this--

--becomes this?

And it's a mystery how this, left safely there on the floor overnight when I decided I was too tired to finish pinning it--

--by the next morning had become this?

We must have ghosts!

Binding is usually my least favorite part of the process, but one of my Facebook quilting groups has turned me onto the technique of glue basting. You literally get out your Elmer's school glue--make sure it says that it's washable!!!--and glue your binding exactly the way you want it, then iron it to set it:

Doesn't the binding look perfect? It's literally just glued! 

The glue basting is so sturdy that I was able to fold this quilt up, glued binding and all, and stuff it into my backpack to take to my mending group's monthly Mending Day at the public library. In between trimming the raveled edge of a vintage counterpane and then rehemming it, helping a novice quilter sandwich her very first quilt, and altering a pair of capris, I finished machine stitching the binding. 

And then I climbed on top of a rickety chair while menders and guests alike watched nervously to take my very first photo of my finished quilt:

And then I went home and took a slightly nicer photo:

I don't normally like a lot of quilting on my quilts, and I get paid back for that when my kids' quilts, which they use constantly, also constantly threaten to fall apart. So there I am during every college break, mending quilts until they have as much quilting on them as they would if I'd quilted them properly the first time.

I obviously can't have a stranger's quilt falling apart on them without me there to constantly mend it, so I had to quilt this one properly the first time. And ugh, fine, the quilting looked nice and added to the overall pattern in a lovely way:

I could have quilted a LOT straighter, but oh, well. That's how you know it was made by a human!

Fortunately, I did have some help with the photography, so that's why these photos turned out as cute as they did. Behold my helper:

Is there anyone who loves the first truly sunny and mild Spring day more than a housecat?

The last step before packing it up to send off was washing and drying it a couple of times to wash out the glue and get the quilting nice and scrunchy. It came out of the dryer scrunchy and adorable, and I hope whoever receives it SUPER loves it.

I want to use up every last bit of horsey flannel and dino flannel in baby quilts of their own, but making and donating those will have to wait until the 2026 Quilt Drive, because I am already in high gear making the puff quilt that my younger kid said she wanted. I want to surprise her with it for her birthday, but I'm still at the stage of cutting out 4" squares for the back of each puff and 4.5" squares for the front, stopping occasionally to re-work my math because SURELY this quilt cannot require 616 of EACH of those?!? Surely I have instead forgotten how to multiply?

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!

If You Stand Still Long Enough, I Will Sew You (and Your Roommates) Easter Baskets

One of my kids doesn't like chocolate, so I've gotten into the habit of doing my Easter prep super early, before the stores get picked over, always in search of that singular non-chocolate (and also non-white chocolate, because in the kid's mind, the only acceptable cocoa is hot cocoa, and even then only sometimes) Easter bunny. 

This year, the sole non-chocolate alternative within driving distance was a blue raspberry gummy astronaut, of all things, from Wal-mart, which I'm officially avoiding during Trump's presidency, but it's better than Amazon and I gave up Target for Lent, so whatever, Wal-mart. Take my four dollars, I guess. 

The past couple of years I've happily tossed the older kid's Easter treats willy-nilly into a box to mail to her, but that was when I still had a daughter at home to do the whole Easter basket ceremony with. This year it'll be just me and my partner eating bunny ear cinnamon rolls and drinking mimosas, sob, so I don't know, I guess I felt like making a fuss. 

I also felt like making a fuss over the younger kid's dorm roommates, whom I have been steadily wooing into bonus daughter-hood all year. I've made so much progress that one or the other tends to pop into our weekly family Zoom calls, so obviously they need Easter baskets, too!

And all the more excuse to set the Cricut up at the kitchen table for the day!

The younger kid and her roommates are probably tired of getting all things baby blue, but that's their class color and I think it's adorable. They also might be tired of getting everything matching and monogrammed with their initials, but how else would I get to live out my dream of having triplets?

Behold the Easter triplets!

The roommates' baskets have bubbles, chalk, glow sticks, and candy. My own kid's baskets are overstuffed, as usual. Candy Easter is our third favorite holiday!

I used the pattern from the We All Sew Easter basket tutorial, but I went my own way with the construction. I also used the Pellon 809 interfacing that I have on hand, not the Pellon Shape-Flex that the tutorial calls for, so you can see that my baskets have less structure that the ones in that tutorial. They stand up well, though, and they weren't a bitch to sew like they would have been with a stiffer interfacing, so I'm pleased with how they turned out.

My older kid doesn't have to abide by baby blue, and she's in a single so she doesn't have to have her name on everything, either:

Now that the kids' Easter stuff is all prepped and ready to mail, I should probably decorate for Easter this week. A big part of me doesn't really feel like putting forth the effort when the kids aren't here to celebrate with, but I'm at the point where I really need to cut the constant moping shit out and, like, find myself again or something. I really like Easter eggs and candy and festive holiday coasters, so maybe I'll just lock in on that.

Oh, I also like buntings! I bet I could do one with appliqued bunny Peeps and it would be really cute.

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!

Check out My DIY Flyers Logo Hoodie

 IT IS SO GREAT, RIGHT?!?

Remember a couple of months ago when I went to a Philadelphia Flyers game and sulked because the merch was too expensive and vowed to violate their intellectual property rights and make my OWN Flyers merch for myself, thank you very much?

Well, I achieved my dream, and it turned out awesome!

The key to the entire enterprise is the Cricut that my partner surprised me with on Christmas. I still need his help with the graphic design, because it works best if you do your templates in another (*cough, cough* better *cough*) graphic design program and save them as svg files to just export into the Cricut Design Space program, but once you've got that, everything else is a dream:

Honestly, my partner's inspiration for this gift was probably watching me, starting this time last year, hand cut a billion applique pieces for the eclipse buntings that I sold the snot out of last year (I miss you, total solar eclipse!). Because the Cricut cuts fabric, even fiddly little shapes, and it cuts it perfectly, just as smooth as butter:

There were a couple of bits in those tight turns where it didn't quite get the full curve, but it was easy to snip:

After that, I just had to baste everything down with fusible webbing and applique it on!

I appliqued it to a Goodwill hoodie, and it's my newest favorite thing:

I keep waiting for strangers to admire it, but 1) I don't go anywhere, 2) I try not to talk to people when I DO go places, and 3) you probably can't actually figure out that it's homemade unless I tell you, which I won't because see 2).

It was such a success, however, that even though I don't yet have another Goodwill hoodie to place it on, I'm already working on version #2, the Flyers Pride logo:

And then I might see which of my favorite teams end up in the Stanley Cup playoffs and make them my next DIY logo. The Stars are playing so well this season, so fingers crossed!

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!