Pencil roll

Yet another project from Last-Minute Patchwork and Quilted Gifts. I'd always liked this project, but was recently inspired to make it because I finally bought some colored pencils and because I liked Marisa's version so much. This is one I made on Friday afternoon. (Seems my summer Fridays are turning into crafty Fridays!) I think this project is in the 2-4 hour gifts and it took me about 2-1/2 hours to assemble it, longer to pick out the fabrics. It was really interesting going through the scraps in my stash and trying to match up the colored pencils with fabrics that I had. When I had the scraps all laid out for cutting I was really NOT liking the fabrics all together, but once I assembled the patchwork piece I really liked it! So, there you go.

I used some linen I had on hand for the outside and the pocket. I had a really hard time getting it to stay straight. I realized after the fact that I should've just pulled one of the threads to make sure I had a straight edge before I started cutting, but that didn't occur to me until too late. Oh well. I added a flowered ribbon to the outside for some extra cute, but it's right in the middle and that's where the ties are, so you can hardly see it. Again, oh well. It's good enough for who it's for: me!

Not sure if you can see it here, but I had some issues with my seam allowance. It must not be exactly 1/4", because over 23 seams in the patchwork my final piece ended up being 3/4" longer than it was supposed to be and didn't match up with the pocket and outside and batting pieces I'd already cut, per the pattern. Oops. I compensated by not stitching directly in the ditch for the first and last three pencil slots. So that's a little wonky, but not too bad. I've already used the roll a couple of times this weekend for some Shrinky Dink projects that I did. A post on those TK later this week! At any rate, I need to get that seam allowance thing figured out, but I want to sew the reverse patchwork for my Little Bits quilt first so that the two (hopefully) match up when I assemble the quilt. This will make more sense when you see the finished project.

In other news, Rob and I watched Lars and the Real Girl again last night. LOVE that movie. Love love love! If you haven't seen it yet, add it to your queue and bump it to the top! And while I'm talking about creative things that I love, I have just fallen in love with the music of Bon Iver. Wow. The album is "For Emma, Forever Ago," which I think is an amazing title, and you can hear some of his music at his MySpace page. Go. Listen. Love.