Unicorn Pencil Case

This week my niece Annie (last featured in my German Paper Star blog...and she has grown up so much since then!) came to stay with me for a few days and when she arrived she had a project in mind that she really wanted to do.  She had found a YouTube video of a unicorn pencil case made out of a pair of fuzzy socks.  She has been wanting to do it for some time so she was excited when she came to hang out with me and we quickly went to get the needed supplies.

It was easy to get the felt, zipper, and thread needed.  Annie had some wool roving from a yard sale score and I had some in my supplies.  The only tricky thing was getting a pair of fuzzy socks.  The ones we ended up with were shorter than the ones in the video so we had to be very thoughtful about sewing all the extras.  The other hang up was that they had rubber grips on the bottom that we had to work around.  Our first step in working with them  was cutting the toe seam, and then resewing the toe with the seam on the same side as the grips, and then turned the sock inside out to have a smooth sock to work with.  It wasn't hard...just and extra step in the process.

Annie decided to try out gluing the zipper like in the video...but as someone that sews all the time I just couldn't bring myself to glue fabric so I opted to do a quick running stitch instead.  Well the glue seemed to work for Annie for a little bit but when she gathered the end and put a little strain on the glue it popped off so she decided to join me in hand sewing everything and not using the glue.  It made it take a little longer to  make but in the end she will be less likely to have a random unicorn leg floating around in her backpack.

I was really impressed with Annie's hand sewing skills.  She is in ballet and has to sew her ribbons on her point shoes so she has been getting some practice in.  For this project we used a running stitch, whip stitch, and back stitch.  Below are our finished products.  Mine has the rainbow hair and Annie's has the purple.  They will be fun to have to kick off the new school year...but I don't think I will be making any for other peoples since they were much more time consuming than anticipated.