My daughter’s school participates in a project that collects shoeboxes filled with some school supplies, personal care products and small toys. These are then shipped to other countries and distributed to children living in poverty so they receive a gift with some practical and fun items.
All packaging material has to be removed from the gifts because in the receiving countries they may not have the ability to dispose of the waste in a sustainable manner. Fair enough, but I thought it was a bit messy to have 3 pens, 3 pencils and 12 coloured pencils just lying around in the box among all the other items. So, I decided to make a pencil roll to at least keep the coloured pencils organized. I imagine that this will also be useful for the eventual recipient as a storage solution.
I didn’t want to spend too much time making one and searched for some quick tutorials. This 10-minute one was definitely the quickest tutorial I found! Not sure I’d be able to finish one in just 10 minutes though, but it’s definitely quick. I did not follow the instructions exactly because in the tutorial the roll is made from a single fabric and I wanted to include a print on the inside to brighten things up.
The outside fabric is a curtain remnant and I used the part that was already hemmed (time saver!) for the top of the roll. It was cut to 8 1/4” x 12.5” which allowed me to make twelve 1” slots for the pencils leaving ¼” on each side to finish the edges.
The pocket is a piece of quilting cotton that I doubled up so the top also didn’t require any finishing. I simply sewed from top to bottom to create the pockets, but at the top of the pocket I did some backstitching to reinforce that part. The sides and bottom were finished with my overlocker with the threads that it already happened to be threaded with. The tails were hidden in between 2 fabric layers at the very end.
On the outside I sewed a 50 cm ribbon to one of the sides as a closure. I am happy with how this pencil roll turned out and I hope one little girl will be able to use it for a long time to make pretty drawings.
Thoughtful as well as useful and pretty. And I love the new look of your blog!
Thank you! The look will change even more once I get the new website up and running and it’ll certainly be better!
It looks a treat and will be very useful for the lucky recipient, This idea also works well for crochet hooks – I use mine all the time.
Yes, it certainly works for a lot of different tools!
This is darling and would be very handy to transport my colored pencils when I want to do some coloring on the road!
Yes it is certainly very portable! Hmmm, and I still need to send you a package…. I’ve gathered everything but haven’t gotten round to shipping it yet.
No worries! It’ll be fun to get it when it arrives!
And tasty! 😉
What a generous and thoughtful thing to do. I am sure your pencil roll will make the child who receives it very happy indeed.
Thank you! I sure hope it will!