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.

P.S. Want to follow along with my craft projects, books I'm reading, dog-walking mishaps, road trips, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!

I Have a New Personality, and It Is This Giant Bow I Sewed for Valentine's Day

It is soooooooo cute, right?!?

I'm genuinely obsessed with it.

I'm at least two months behind on the giant bow trend, and honestly probably more like six months, but it was the entirety of December during which everyone was showing off their giant Christmas bows on Tiktok that finally influenced me to covet a giant bow of my own.

I figured I could probably reverse engineer my own giant bow pattern by looking at all the million examples on social media, but then I was all, "Don't be a bad citizen, Self!", and purchased the pattern on etsy...

...and then proceeded to ignore all the pattern creator's helpful instructions for actually making the pattern and messed up a bunch of parts and cut the ribbon notches after the fact so I had to satin stitch the raw edges and forgot most of the edge stitching and tried to sub in stash fleece instead of batting but had to iron on interfacing anyway because fleece wasn't stiff enough, etc.

I did remember the quilting, at least!

I had so much trouble thanks to my own cussedness that I was worried I was going to hate the finished bow, but omg I am OBSESSED with it. I'm already mentally digging through my fabric stash to see what bow I'm going to replace this one with after Valentine's Day, and I've got a couple of ideas for custom fabric prints that I want my husband/in-house graphic designer to create for me that would make printed panels just the right size for these bows.

Spoiler alert: would a giant crime scene tape bow not be SO COOL?!?

Here's what else I'm currently working on that's not turning out quite right:

I'm disappointed with the yellow that I picked for my latest cross-stitched bookmark--it's too light! You can barely see it against the white! How do you figure out if your floss is going to have enough contrast with your fabric? Is this when you're supposed to switch your photo to black and white and compare the tones?

Hold on...

Huh! It kind of works, because both of the yellows barely show up, but the green seems super light, too, and I don't have a problem with the green actually, so I dunno.

Ah, well! Spam me with your floss-choosing strategies in the Comments!

As soon as I resign myself to my too-pale yellow pony and finish that cross-stitch bookmark, I think I want to start on my first BIG cross-stitch project.

Check out this cross-stitch pattern I found on the Antique Pattern Library website!

I'm completely in love with Sir Kittycat, and I can't wait to stitch him. Do you think I should stitch the white parts or the red parts?

I need to learn how to cross-stitch super fast, too, because the Antique Pattern Library also has horoscope figures, Aesop's fables, my boy Achilles, and Joan of Arc literally being burned at the stake, the latter of which is, of course, desperately sad but I want to make it anyway. Even though we're not religious, I've always considered Joan of Arc my older kid's patron saint, and I think it would make a morbid, but interesting, gift for her.

So, a giant crime scene tape bow for one kid and a cross-stitch of a woman being burned at the stake for another. I've already got so many ideas for Christmas!

P.S. Want to follow along with my craft projects, books I'm reading, dog-walking mishaps, road trips, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!

I Can Mend a Hole in a Back Pocket Three Different Ways. This is My First Favorite!

Just as I promised, here’s my other favorite way to mend a hole in a back pocket!

I’ve got two favorite ways to mend a hole in a back pocket (and a third way that I don’t like as much but that also works great!), and recently, my kid presented me with a pair of pants that had a hole in each back pocket, allowing me to put my two favorite methods into direct competition. She keeps her phone in one back pocket and her wallet in the other, so as a bonus, the holes are nearly symmetrical and nearly identical. It’s the perfect scenario for an experiment!

With the kid’s permission, I mended one hole with a patch on the outside, and one hole with a patch on the inside. Both methods require the same materials and take approximately the same amount of time. They’re also both very easy, with the trickiest part of the outside patch the folding and creasing, and the trickiest part of the inside patch its placement. I showed you how to do the outside patch last week, so this time, let’s discuss the inside patch!

This inside patch method involves just what it says: instead of patching the outside of the hole, you’ll be patching the inside of the hole. The patch will still show through the hole, but will be far less visible than a patch outside the hole would be. What WILL be pretty visible–depending on thread color!–is all the reinforcement stitching that stabilizes the hole and keeps the patch attached. Depending on your goals and your skill set, the stitching can be messy (but effective!) or highly decorative.

Here’s what you need to complete this mend:

Materials

• patch. Match the weight of the existing fabric, but otherwise the choice is up to you! If you match the patch fabric very well, the patch will be quite inconspicuous, but a visible patch can be really cute, too.
• thread. This is the most visible part of this mend, so your choice is very important here. Well-matched thread color will be nearly invisible, but you also can do such cute things with visible mending.
• cutting and sewing supplies. This is a hand-sewing project, so requires a hand-sewing needle and thread scissors. Pins are helpful, but optional. You don’t particularly need an iron, and you definitely don’t need fusible interfacing, although you can use it it–just keep it away from the hole itself!

Step 1: Prep and place the patch.

Cut the patch to be wider than the hole in both length and width, then insert it into the back pocket and place it behind the patch. This is the trickiest part of the whole project, since you have to make sure that the patch sufficiently overlaps the hole, and you have to do it mostly by feel.

Once the patch is in place, you can pin it to make sure it stays secure, but it should stay very well even without pinning. If you do pin, make sure that you haven’t caught the inside of the pants with your pin–the last thing you want to do is sew your pocket shut!

Step 2: Hand-stitch the patch in place.

This is the fun–and a little bit time-consuming!– part!

Thread your needle with the thread you’ve chosen, and then simply begin to stitch the patch to the pocket. Focus on stabilizing the hole, particularly the raw edges of the hole, but stitch over the entire patch area, the more stitches, the better. Every stitch that you put in, however messily, strengthens the fabric and reinforces the mend.

When you’re finished hand-sewing, turn the pocket inside-out and trim away any excess patch material, being careful not to cut through any of your stitching.

I asked my kid for her final opinion (since these are her pants, lol!), and she said that she liked the look of the inside patch better, but thought that the outside patch was fine, too. I will say that the inside patch seems less visible from a distance, but these grey jeans were tricky to match, and if I’d been able to match the outside patch fabric perfectly to the pants it might well be just as inconspicuous.

For what it’s worth, I volunteer monthly with my local public library to mend items that patrons bring in, and I use the inside patch method almost exclusively during Mending Days. It’s especially easy when someone needs a mend in the knee or thigh, since I can use the zigzag stitch on my sewing machine to do alllll that stitching in just a few seconds. If it’s a rip that I’m mending, not a hole, often the patch isn’t visible at all afterwards, and if I happen to have a thread color that perfectly matches the fabric, the stitching is barely visible, as well.

Which method do YOU prefer?

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I Am My Younger Child's Bespoke Seamstress, and Other Adventures in Parenting College Students

To be fair, serving as my kid's bespoke seamstress is high-key my favorite thing EVER. All I apparently really want with my life is for people to want me to sew things for them.

And the little kid, at least, is happy to oblige!

First, some mending:

I don't know if it's secret sensory issues or just the fact that I raised picky parsnips, but both kids have the absolute worst time trying to find clothes they like. I lecture often on how many pants and shirts, etc., ought to make up a minimum wardrobe, and yet both kids regularly go off to college with half that and then bitch that all their clothes are constantly falling apart.

Like, YEAH, if you're wearing and therefore washing a garment all the time, it's obviously going to wear out more quickly! THIS IS WHY YOUR MOTHER TOLD YOU TO BRING MORE CLOTHES TO SCHOOL!

And don't even get me started about coats. One kid insists that she has not and will not ever find a coat she likes, and pretty much just layers infinite hoodies. In a Philadelphia winter, no less. I've told her that at some point her professors are going to decide that she must be too impoverished to buy herself a coat and take up a collection, and she'll wake up one morning to find that they've put a gift bag with a brand-new coat in it outside her dorm room door. It won't be to her taste, but she'll nevertheless have to wear it until graduation lest she seem ungrateful.

The other kid does have a single coat that she approves of enough to wear--not that it's warm enough for her own Ohio winters, but whatever--but over Winter Break one day I got too close to the kid while she was wearing it, and I was all, "...do you ever wash this thing?"

"Sometimes," she said.

"How?"

"Cold and Delicate, like the label says."

I said, "Yeah... no," and then wrestled it off her. Girl was wearing this thing not only to class every day, but also to the horse barn twice a week and the Humane Society once a week, not to mention on environmental science field trips and throughout all the other horrors of college life. And then she was barely washing it, because the label said she had to treat it fancy!

Like, it's a COAT, Bro. And not even a puffer coat. It can take a little bit of temperature. I soaked it for a day in hot water with a half-cup of Biz stirred in, closed inside my cooler to keep the water hot. I will not describe to you the state of the water when I finally drained it, but it was something. Afterwards, I stuffed it inside a mesh laundry bag and washed it on Warm and Regular with two rinses with my regular laundry detergent, more Biz, a half-cup of ammonia, and a fistful of citric acid in the rinse compartment because I have the hardest water on the planet. 

Let me tell you that this coat was squeaky clean when it got done. Not a whiff of horse or dog or polluted creek to be found! The faux fur was a little stiff after air drying, but after I went over it with a lint rake it was also soft and fluffy again. 

This is your sign to become as obsessed with the r/laundry subreddit as I am.

Along with the mending and the laundry, I actualized the little kid's dream of stitching just the sleeves of a long-sleeved T-shirt inside the sleeves of a short-sleeved T-shirt, so that the kid could get the layered T-shirt look without having to wear layered T-shirts on her body:

*cough, cough* sensory issues *cough*

I thought the stitch lines ended up a little too visible to fool anyone, but the kid said she liked it, so whatever.

My biggest sewing project, though, was for a kid who I don't even know yet!

In the younger kid's first care package of the school year, I sent her and her roommates a set of hoodies that I'd appliqued with their school name in their class colors. I'm VERY chuffed that all the kids seem to love them, and even more chuffed that when I offered to make a similar hoodie for the younger kid's Hell Child (it's a school thing, don't worry about it) in that kid's class colors, the younger kid was super enthusiastic about it.

So I thrifted a hoodie, double-checked the one I'd made for the kid so I could remember how on earth I'd made it--

I've asked the kid several times if the loose threads are an issue, because I'd worried they wouldn't like it, but she says that all the hoodie recipients are super into that look. So yay!

--and then made a red version for the kid's baby red!

I used Heat n' Bond instead of Pellon for this project (I miss you, Joann's!), and although I'm worried it won't wear as well as the Pellon, omg it was SO much easier to apply.

Honestly, I think it turned out even cuter than the blue version, thanks to the matching hoodie color:

And now the kids are back at school for the Spring semester, and I have nobody to sew for but boring old me, sigh. I did impulse buy this giant bow pattern so I can make a giant Valentine's bow that I do not need but will nevertheless decorate my front door with, so that will keep me entertained for a few evenings, I guess.

Spam me with all your ideas for where I can put giant bows!

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 Can Mend a Hole in a Back Pocket Three Different Ways. This is My Second Favorite.

I originally published this tutorial over at Crafting a Green World.

Mend that hole in your back pocket with an easy patch stitched to the outside.

Solve this debate for me!

If you want to fix a hole in the back pocket of a pair of pants, and you DON’T want to take the entire pocket off to do it, there are two main methods: patch the outside of the pocket, or patch the inside of the pocket.

Both are easy enough to do start to finish within an hour (or one episode of The Pitt, if that’s how you’re measuring time, ahem). Both require the same hand-sewing skills–which is hardly any, lol! The outside patch requires folding down its raw edges, which is fiddly, but the inside patch requires placing the patch while it’s inside a pocket, which is fiddly. The outside patch has a more visible patch, but the inside patch has more visible stitching.

I never can work out which I like better, and whenever I do this mend for someone else, I feel like they’re generally pretty evenly split, as well–some people really like the outside patch, and some people really like the inside one.

So I’m going to show them both to you, and YOU’RE going to decide which one is better!

First up: here’s how to patch the outside of a back pocket.

Materials

You will need:

• patch. For this project, the patch consists of a piece of similar material and weight, a couple of inches longer in both dimensions than the hole.
• matching thread. Use regular sewing thread that matches the patch and/or the pants.
• iron. This will help you crease the edges of the patch that you fold in.
• sewing supplies. Scissors, pins, etc.

Step 1: Prep the patch.

I didn’t end up using the patch, above, because I came to my senses and realized that it’s the correct weight but it doesn’t match AT ALL, but it at least gives you an idea about what size the patch should be in relation to the hole.

Fold all sides of the patch to the wrong side, then iron to crease. This will hide the raw edges of the patch.

Optional, but you can take a few minutes at this point to tack the folds down on the patch. It’s not necessary and I didn’t do it, but it will keep the folds in place while you stitch the patch over the hole, and that can be very helpful.

Step 2: Hand-sew the patch over the hole.

You barely have to know how to sew to do this mend!

Start by placing the patch, folds down, over the hole. Center the hole under the patch so it’s well-covered. You can pin it in place, but it’s not super necessary.

Baste the patch to the pocket just to keep it in place, and to tack the folds in place if you didn’t do that in the previous step. A running stitch is fine for this.

After the patch is basted, your entire job is simply to stitch the snot out of that patch. The more stitches, no matter how sloppy and amateur, the better! A running stitch is fine, and so is a back stitch. Heck, you could just do a bunch of French knots if you wanted! The idea is simply to reinforce the fabric around that hidden hole and to keep the patch in place, and every stitch, no matter how messy, is a stitch that will do just that.

You do have to be VERY careful that you sew through ONLY that back pocket and patch, and not also through the back of the pants. This requires keeping a hand inside the pocket as you sew, and, at least based on my personal experiences, also requires pricking yourself at least four times. Fun fact: hydrogen peroxide is a champ for getting blood out of clothing!

You also want to make sure that you’re stitching enough around the edges that the patch won’t come loose or the creases unfolded, but if you’re laying down as many stitches as I’m telling you to, that won’t be an issue. I’m serious: sew for a WHOLE ENTIRE episode of The Pitt!

Even though you’re not repairing the actual hole, as such, this mend works because you’re stabilizing the hole, reinforcing the fabric around it, and strengthening the entire area. Every stitch you put in is one more bit of strength you’re adding.

If you love to hand-stitch and/or you’re very good at it, check out sashiko mending for this project. You can make some beautiful patterns with your stitches, as visible or invisible as you’d prefer.

For even more visible mending fun, play with thread color and fabric color and shape. I don’t recommend double-sided fusible interfacing for this project, unless it’s little scraps that you’re using instead of basting, but that shouldn’t stop you from cutting your patch into a cute shape, because you’ll be stitching it down with lots and lots of stitches.

When that episode of The Pitt is finished, you’ll have a sturdy patch on the outside of your back pocket. Stay tuned for next week, when I show you how to sew a sturdy patch on the INSIDE of your back pocket, and then you can see which one you like better!

P.S. Want to follow along with my craft projects, books I'm reading, dog-walking mishaps, road trips, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!

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!

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...

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