Planning for Party – the mini series: Episode 3 – Crayon Roll

Thanks for tuning in, this “mini-series” will be the daily play-by-play, panicked countdown of a mom on a mission to pull off an original and memorable birthday for my soon-to-be three year old. I’ll take you through the last week of planning, because of course, that’s the fevered crunch time. And naturally when everything goes awry…

 

T minus 10 days and counting…

I had researched instructions for my crayon roll online. And after making the sample version,

I opted to combine two great tutorials to come up with my own design – nothing elaborate obviously as I am certainly no seamstress. But making a sample first allowed me to assess what I liked (the feel of the batting) and didn’t want to do (like sewing buttons). If you’d like my instructions, click HERE to see The Mommy Upgrade version of the crayon roll.

So remember, I work. Getting this project done would have to happen at night and weekends.  I spent the past Wednesday and Thursday evenings cutting fabric. Loads of fabric. It was exhausting. Little did I know at the time, I bought way too much fabric. I just kept cutting and cutting and cutting… I did get “smart” (really? after jumping in with way too much fabric?) pretty early on in the process and make a foam board pattern which I found to work much easier than actually measuring each piece. Particularly when you have a mound of fabric and my invisible pen was exactly that. The package said the ink would stay visible for 24 – 48 hours. Uh, try 24 – 48 seconds. It literally disappeared before my eyes. Lot of good that did me.

The weekend arrived and Friday morning I had a renewed sense of spirit about what was quickly appearing to be a daunting project. But by Friday night – I was a Big Fail, I chose to be a vegetable rather than a hip new age seamstress. I made the executive decision to veg out with the hubs watching The Tourist (love Johnny Depp – how could I resist?).

So Saturday greets me and I am ready, set, go! But wow, I didn’t account for the massive amounts of ironing that would also be a requisite for this project. An unscheduled set-back. Getting the permanent crease out was time-consuming to say the least.

I spent my free time ironing and pinning the pieces together. Because I have so much “free” time with an almost 3 y.o. who wants to do EVERYTHING with Mommy – even though Daddy is within arms reach. “Mommy, can I see? Mommy I want to heeeellllpppp,” as she climbs up on my lap with the speed of a mountain goat.

I take the assembly line approach to this. Being very goal-oriented, it helped to see the pillars of pinned half-done rolls in a pile to assess my progress. Keep in mind, at this point, I still haven’t keyed in on that I have TOO MUCH fabric.

So Sunday was finally sewing day and I was excited at my newfound skillful crafty talent. Visioning a whole new category for the blog titled, “Sewing creations,” I set to work. Tah-dah! I really honestly believed with one focused day, I could just whip them out.

Hahahahahahahahahahaha.

Now, I am not ruling out user error but I had presumed my machine was fixed – until I started the insurmountable project of sewing the pockets into the rolls. Ay Yi Yi Yi. Let’s talk about broken thread, tangled bobbins and what the heck else could go wrong? I was confident the bobbin was loaded correctly – Bianca gave me an excellent tutorial so it had to be something else. (Me?)

Oh yeah, I forgot to tell you about putting the serious bloddy gash in my finger threading the stupid thing. Yes, I said threading it. And no, I didn’t get it caught on the needle. That would be entirely too obvious. These machines should come with biohazard stickers.

After 5 hours of sewing the inside pockets, I threw in the towel for the evening. I demand to know who’s freakin’ idea was this anyway? I had barely made a dent in the pile. The boys pile. Argghhh.

The clock was ticking…