Fabric Pen Roll Tutorial

Some time ago, I picked up a free project sheet at JoAnn for a fabric crayon roll. It looked quick and easy, and I thought a crayon holder might make a nice gift for a toddler. Recently, for the 8 millionth time when I couldn't find most of my favorite 5-color pen set, I decided to modify this pattern to keep my favorite pens handy and together.

Of course then it took me a half hour to find the pattern sheet...

And then it took me another 15 minutes to find the fabrics...

And I still have yet to find all 5 pens!

For this project, I needed:

• Two 7" x 16" rectangles of fabric for the pen pockets
• Two 9" x 16" rectangles of fabric for the outside/back
• One 9" x 16" rectangle of fleece for adding stiffness to the roll (not visible from outside)
• Two pieces of ribbon, each ~26" long

These 4 fabrics are from fat quarters I'd purchased for a different project, but they were fun and happy and I had extra. I had on hand 3 colors of thread that would have worked, but I thought the goldenrod looked best with all 4 fabrics.

I used 4 colors because I couldn't choose just 2. The stripes will be the outside, the pink the inside, and the blue and yellow will make up the pen pocket.




The scrap piece of giraffe print fleece I used for the inside of my fabric roll is a little skinnier than desired, but I wasn't bothered about that and fudged the stitching later.

STEP 1
With right sides together, sew the long sides of the pocket pieces together with a 1/4" seam, leaving the short sides open.

STEP 2
Turn right sides out and press flat. I pressed the seam several inches down from the top so that some of the blue would show over the yellow.

STEP 3
With right sides out, top stitch 1/4" down from the top. (I forgot to take a picture of this step.)

STEP 4
Assemble all the pieces into a stack in this order:

1. Fleece (giraffes)
2. Inside 9"x16" piece, right side up (pink)
3. Sewn 7"x16" pieces for pocket (blue/yellow), aligned with bottom of inside piece
4. Ribbons, folded in half, with folds lined up against the edge (pretty side, if there is one, should NOT be showing here, that was my bad)
5. Outside 9"x16" piece, wrong side up (stripes) [Not shown]

Pin these pieces together so they do not shift while sewing.


 

STEP 5
Stitch around the outside of assembled fabrics with a 3/8" seam, leaving about a 2" opening for turning them inside out. I got distracted fudging my seam because of the too-small fleece and had to use a seam ripper to open up the 2" space again. It's not a real sewing experience without use of the seam ripper anyway.


STEP 6
Turn right side out and press flat.








STEP 7
Topstitch 1/4" from edge around the perimeter of the roll. This effectively seals off the 2" opening that was left for turning.


STEP 8
Using chalk or pins, mark the dividing stitching lines for the pens on the pocket. I made my slots 1 1/4" wide and have 12 openings.









STEP 9
Stitch along the chalk lines on your pocket, taking care to back stitch at both ends in order to prevent the seams from unraveling. For my first two lines I started at the blue and stitched down, but that led to the puckers you see in the bottom left corner, so I switched to starting from the yellow edge and this looked much better.

Ta-da! All finished! As I mentioned, the pretty side of my ribbons doesn't show on the back side of the tied roll, which was a mistake. Unfortunately, to fix it I would have to go back to Step 5, and that was more seam ripping than I deemed it was worth. The design still shows when the bows are tied, so I am satisfied.

For a less froufrou look, two small loops of elastic instead of ribbon would function nicely.

(To make the original crayon roll pictured above, use 18"x11" and 18"x7" rectangles, and sew the pocket into the middle of the backing fabric, creating openings on both the top and bottom for crayons.)