Once upon a time there was a dopey looking horse on a medieval cope who got turned into a dopey looking unicorn: Hengest. As he took about four and a half years from start to finish you would think he had abundantly scratched any unicorn itch I might have had. And then I came across some paper I bought in the Netherlands years ago for wrapping St Nicholas presents. It was covered in colourful cartoonish representations of the various people and things associated with that festival, among them St Nicholas’ horse. But I did not see a horse. I saw a unicorn. It’s what happens when you have recently become grandmother to a sweet baby girl. Your thoughts go pink and lilac and unicorny. And so I played around with this little horse, added a horn, rearranged his mane, tweaked his saddle blanket to have room for an initial, changed the colour palette from primary to pastel, and there was Esmee’s Unicorn!

But what to do with it? Well, babies use bibs. Why not find a nice plain white bib and unicornify it? Unfortunately our local supermarket had a wide array of coloured and pre-decorated bibs, but nothing plain and white. The closest thing I could find, tucked away on the last-season’s-things rail, was a small white broderie anglaise bib and cap. I’m not sure who thought it would be a good idea to make a baby’s bib out of broderie anglaise, and I seriously doubt that the person who decided on the size of it has ever fed a baby, but one has to work with what is available.

At first I considered stitching on the back of the bib, which is a plain fabric – it could then be used double-sided. It would mean very careful stitching, taking the needle in a sewing motion through one layer of fabric only, and fastening on and off would be tricky (although I had done something similar when embellishing the foot of a memory bear). More problematically, the colours would probably shine through to the front. I dismissed this approach. My next idea was to simply stitch over the broderie anglaise, but I worried that the unevenness of the fabric would make it difficult to keep the lines neat. A patch, then? And preferably something that doesn’t fray, so it doesn’t have to be hemmed or oversewn. I decided on some pelmet-weight non-woven interfacing which I originally bought for a stumpwork butterfly, then traced the design, pricked it, and poked a pencil through the holes to create a connect-the-dots unicorn. Pick the required shades of DMC, and we’re ready to go.

By the way, seeing the way my needle marked the interfacing I had a thought: it had been quite difficult to mark the dots with my mechanical pencil going through the holes in the pricked tracing paper, so why not just prick the tracing paper while it sits on top of the interfacing? A quick try showed that this was perfectly feasible, and if you prick with a bit of thought, placing the holes closer together on tight curves, you could actually use these holes for your stitches! In fact I might try this for a workshop or children’s kit – you could pre-prick a small design and let them create a brooch or a fridge magnet. The stitching could be done in hand, no need for a hoop as the fabric is so stiff.

I filed that little idea away and set to work on the unicorn. Fasten on with a knot at the front (pink arrow) and a few small stab stitches (blue arrow; neither of them very easy to see because I chose to photograph it while using light grey thread on a white background…) and then just stem stitch over all the lines – it was quite relaxing! The only bits which were not stem stitched were the nostril (satin stitch) and the eye (straight stitches with a doubled single strand fastened on with a loop start).

When the whole unicorn had been stitched it was time to attach him (her?) to the bib. First I cut around the outline of the unicorn, as close to the stitching as I dared. I didn’t cut the bit between the head and the blanket, as the background it would be stitched onto was white anyway; if the background had been a different colour, I would reluctantly have attempted to cut that part too. Then I backstitched around the outline using a polyester sewing thread, tucking the stitches underneath the stem stitches as much as possible. And here it is: one unicorned bib.

But even as I was getting things together for Esmee’s bib, somewhere in the goldwork-loving recesses of my mind an idea stirred. The sort of unicorns that appeal to little girls are, unlike woolly Hengest, sparkly and blingy. Should there be bling in Esmee’s unicorn? But no, a bib needs to be washable. Still, there is nothing to stop me from stitching a metalwork unicorn purely for my own enjoyment, right? There would be gold and silver passing, there might be shiny metallic kid leather for the blanket, there could be spangles…

… and there could be colour! Although goldwork suggests, well, gold, and possibly silver and copper, modern metal embroidery materials come in all sorts of pretty shades. How is this for some unicorn-appropriate twist? And I’ve got the same colours in a thinner passing thread.

Still, although my stash of goldwork materials is fairly extensive (and about to become even more so – watch this space) I don’t have much in the way of coloured metallics for couching; no pink twist or passing, for example, and no coloured metallic kid either. So I paid a little visit to Sarah Homfray’s excellent shop and some colourful shiny goodies are making their way Figworthy-wards! We’ll soon be all set for a blingy unicorn .