Sometimes I make something on the fly, while my kids are in school, and it fails miserably. I try to rework it, and even take photos. Then I don’t post about it on the blog because, well… it failed. It’s frustrating that I spent so much time on it – and I can’t say anything positive, really. So I don’t.

Then I find the photos 2 years later and decide it’s a good opportunity to write about something that failed… funny how your perspective on “a good post” changes over the years!

These hats look cute – they even seem like they might be perfect, but the amount of trouble they caused was… well – here’s the story. (With numbered sewing fails!)

It was the winter of 2015 and my kids were at school. I wanted to create some cute unicorn winter hats for them, since “everyone” was wearing one! I had a hat pattern from a year previous (1) and a few hats to trace (2) for samples.  I was set and proceeded to cut the only fabric in my stash that would be the right colour, a nice white fleece (3). Lengths and lengths of shiny knit were cut for the unicorn mane, ears sewn and horns created (4). The kids arrived home from school and tried them on, much to my dismay they didn’t fit! (5) Not to be deterred I took them apart and tried to resize them. (6) They were better, but the horns kept falling apart. (7) They didn’t get worn a lot. (8) Eventually, we gave them away, or threw them out – I can’t even remember now! It’s been bugging me ever since.

Eeep! Here’s a breakdown of what went wrong:

(1) Right – don’t use a pattern sized to your child from the year before. And don’t use the older child’s sizing to guess the younger child’s sizing… In general, I don’t make things while they are at school without double-checking the size first anymore.

(2) So, the traced hats had a different stretch than the fabric I was using for the hats. Super unfortunate – since the hats had a lot of stretch I made the fleece version way too tight.

(3) Nice white fleece + children = Nice dirty fleece – ‘nuf said!

(4) The horns were surprisingly difficult to create! It was hard to know how big to make them. Then I couldn’t make them stand up properly. I ended up hand stitching them to the top of the hat – but they fell over. Plus, the strip of knit I used to create the rings on the horn kept coming off.

(5) My size guessing resulted in hats that were too short and not big enough around.

(6) My awesome brainwave was now not working. I was demotivated to fix them and so disappointed that all that time I’d spent was seemingly wasted. Instead of fixing them properly, unfortunately I chose to do a sloppy job of trying to fix them.

(7) See (4)! I really should have hand sewn the knit wrapping the horn, but of course – that would require patience, which I was now out of.

(8) The hats were not really comfortable. Which in kid-language = not worn.

Conclusion…

So there you have it, the story of the  “Failed Unicorn Hats of 2015” – to go down in history. (Or not!)

Sometimes things go wrong, and it is not fun and time is “wasted”. And you have to move on. But I will always remember those crazy hats – because they were going to be so cute! And I still might be a bit disappointed that they didn’t turn out…

Do you have any sewing fails you still remember? Do share!