I love Klutz craft kits! At least all of the ones I've tried so far. I remember being a kid and always wanting to buy them, but they seemed so expensive that I hated to ask my mom to buy them. That's why I was so excited to find this one on clearance at Hobby Lobby a few months ago. These kits usually sell for around $20, but this one was marked down to $2.19!
Now I am totally a child at heart, so it would be completely normal for me to make this cute little unicorn pillow as a decoration for my office. My one-year-old niece was coming for a visit, though, so I thought it would make a sweet little gift for her room.
Like all of the Klutz kits I've tried in the past, this one included pretty much everything I needed to complete the project. The only thing I had to provide was scissors. Here's a picture of the contents:
It included a full color instruction book, fuzzy fabric for the pillow, gold fabric for the ears and horn, a piece of felt for the bottom, felt flowers and leaves, felt eyes, sparkly pompoms, a needle, thread, stuffing, and a cardboard stand for the "cake". All of the fabric and felt was pre-cut, making it easy to assemble. The cardboard cake stand was printed with a pretty pattern, but I didn't notice that before I took the picture.
The instruction book was excellent! It had pictures of each of the steps and provided very clear directions. This kit was only for one project and would be kind of hard to repeat, but the other Klutz sewing kits I've done gave instructions you could use to keep making things with your own supplies after you used all of the ones it provided. I'll probably post reviews of some of the other kits later so you can see what those are like, too.
I'm going to show you the how I worked through the project, but I won't give the full details since that is proprietary information from the kit.
I began by sewing the horn and the ears. The horn was made using only the gold fabric, while the ears had fuzzy fabric on the back and gold on the front. I've added a picture below so you can see how the fabric looked before it was sewn together. While it was really pretty, the gold fabric was tricky to sew since it was kind of slippery.
After making the ears and horn, I sewed the felt eyes onto the main piece of fuzzy fabric using black thread. Some of the white fluff showed where I punched the needle through, so I lightly colored the fluff with a black sharpie to make the eyes look neater. There was an option to make the eyes go up like the unicorn was smiling or down to look like it was sleeping. This was the first way you could personalize the pillow.
Once all of the pieces were assembled, it was time to sew them together. I first sewed the ends of the large piece to make a circle of fabric. Then, I sewed the felt circle onto the main piece for the bottom of the pillow. Next, I sewed on the ears and the fluffy fabric that made the pillow top, leaving a gap so the pillow could be stuffed. Finally, I closed the gap and attached the horn to the top.
There was enough stuffing to make a fluffy pillow, but I would have liked a little more to make it a bit firmer. That didn't make it any less cute, though, so it wasn't a big deal at all!
The final step was to make the flowery decorations and sew them on wherever I wanted. There were nine felt flowers, seven leaves, and eight sparkly pompoms. The cool part about this step was that you could choose what types of flowers you'd like to make or even make the felt pieces look like a mane rather than flowers. The book provided instructions for each option and showed several pictures of other ways to customize the pillow.
I chose to go with the first option of meringues since I really liked the way the pillow looked on the box. Even though I went with the basic choice, I was still able to customize it a bit by choosing how to arrange the pieces. Here's what it looked like when I was finished:
It probably took me about three hours to finish this project, and it was a lot of fun to do. Of course, I'm an "adult", so I wouldn't be surprised if it took a kid a little longer to make. The suggested age for the kit is 10 and up. I think that is about right for the difficulty level of the project as long as the child is motivated and has the patience to work on a longer project. Some of the other Klutz sewing kits include a bunch of smaller projects that don't take as long to make when you do them one at a time. Those might be better for kids who need the satisfaction of completing things quickly and having a finished project to motivate them to make more.
At $20, I think this kit is reasonably priced for the amount of time it kept me occupied, the quality of the materials, and the super cute final product. The Klutz "Sew Mini" kits are a better value, though, since you can make so many different projects with them. I'll try to review those kits later so you can see how they differ.
At $2.19 on clearance, this kit was a total steal and one of the most satisfying clearance projects I've tried.
My niece absolutely loved it! She's only one-year-old, so it won't be something she gets to play with right now, but it will make a nice decoration for her room until she's older. I did let her hold it for a little while under close supervision to make sure she didn't try to pull off any of the decorations and eat them. She seemed to think it was a ball and tried tossing it around the room for awhile.
Check back for more clearance projects! I've got a bunch of things stockpiled and plenty of ideas. Also, don't forget to check the clearance sections of your favorite stores for yourself and let me know about anything you make.
Commentaires