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Project of the Month: How to make a Pencil Roll

This month to help get ready for the new school term we’ve done a how to make your own Pencil Roll! Could also be used for paint brushes or even make up brushes!

You will need:

Materials:
X2 Different fabrics 28cm x 39cm
60cm 15mm wide Satin Ribbon

Tools and Equipment:
Sewing Machine, Thread, Pins, Needle, Fabric Scissors, Ruler, Pen / Tailors Chalk,
Iron and Ironing board, Pinking Shears, a mug / something with a curve to draw round

Let’s get Making!

Decide which of your fabrics will be the inner and which will be the outer. For our roll the white animal fabric is the outer and the purple raindrops is the inner. From both of the fabrics cut the following: 28cm x 13cm. 28cm x 26cm (you’ll notice this fits into a fat quarter perfectly so you could actually make the roll out of just one fat quarter is you didn’t want the contrasting fabrics!
Next just with the larger piece of both fabrics grab your mug and butter it up to the top corners, draw around and then cut to give you a nice smooth curve!

Little Hack
Fabric cut out and ready to go!

Take the two smaller pieces right sides together and stitch along the top (1cm seam allowance for this project) Open out and press and then fold so that wrong sides are facing and press the seam down. This will make up the front pockets.

Pocket piece pressed

Take your pocket piece and lay it on top of the larger inner piece of fabric so that bottom corners and lined up. Now grab your pins and a rular, you can use the pins to mark out where you will be stitching to make the multiple pouches or a washable pen / tailors chalk if you prefer. Mark out the pins 3.5cm apart from each – APART from the ones on the other edge, they will need to be 4.5 cm from the edge to allow for seam allowance for when assembling. This perfectly fit 3 pencils per pouch, feel free to change it round to be either smaller or larger depends how many you’d like to fit if each section!

Align your pins for where / how big you’d like your pockets to be

Stitch straight lines down attaching the pouch to the inner piece of fabric. Snip off the loose threads and grab out remaining outer piece of fabric face down (so right sides together) sandwich together and pin around the edge

Sandwich together your pieces, right sides facing

Leave a gap of roughly 7cm along the edge (in between the curves) and sitch around the edge. Snip off the corners, turn and press flat.
Ladder Stitch the top opening.

Place your roll in front of you with so that you’re looking at the back of it. Measure 10cm across from the left hand side and 10cm up from the bottom and pin the centre point of your ribbon to this spot. Stitch the ribbon to the roll but be sure not to stitch all the way through tacking down one of the pouches. I find tucking my finger in one of the pouched so I can feel when the needle is through the fabric and stop it going through the pouches. This should also line up so that this little line of stitching doesn’t show when you turn the roll over as it’s inside on the little pockets.

And Voila! Your roll is complete! Please let us know how you got on with this project and if you share on social media tag us in with #bunyippotm so we can see them!