Okay, not just back-to-school

I’ve been getting craft-store emails and they’ve moved from Halloween to Thanksgiving so I guess it’s time to start thinking ahead a little. (A very little. School starts up in some places right about now, though around here it happens closer to Labor Day.)

Charm-Tier supporters in July on Ko-Fi and Patreon got a sort of sneaky back-to-school design: the Coffee Wrap. It’s available for standalone purchase and while it doesn’t technically have a stereotypical back-to-school theme, it’s a good teacher gift. Even if they don’t drink hot or cold drinks, it also works as a plant pot wrap/sling.

Other back-to-school ideas

Book bands

Most of my designs that come with vertical bunting options work well as book bands. You can make the standard bunting as per the General Directions and then thread in a piece of elastic. Overlap and sew or glue the elastic ends, then ease the join in so it’s hidden inside the bunting. Or you can shuffle the order of stitching: put the back on the bunting and skip the Openings, stitching the final Outline first. Then tuck the ends of your elastic into the openings, being careful not to put a twist in the band, and run the Openings to finish the topstitching. It requires carefully measuring the elastic ahead of time, but it eliminates the chance of the unattractive elastic join showing itself.

(Searching for "BuntingV" will bring up most of the designs that currently have them, and if you see an older design you want to use that doesn’t, let me know and I’ll bring it up to date.)

Collegiate bunny

The Bunny Lop plushie is a great place to showcase cotton prints, including licensed college ones. Or unlicensed ones, I guess, if you go to a school too small for fabric mills’ time and you run your own print-on-demand. If you can’t find or make a print, you can always just use the school colors. You’re all but guaranteed to find stripes of the right color on Spoonflower, and the 8x8 swatch is big enough to make all but the largest bunny’s ears.

Bunny Lop is suitable to plenty of non-school uses - may I recommend a burrito bunny made with Chapati minky and Taco Bat It cotton from my textures collection?