HOW TO MAKE AN ARTIST’S PAINTBRUSH ROLL

My boyfriend is an artist and he needed something to keep his brushes organized. Before I met him, he used a rubber band. Good thing we started dating. *wink wink*

This roll is a spin-off of your standard knitting needles roll. I simply added a sling because my boyfriend loves his free hands. Uh, that’s what he told me. I also used interfacing because he wanted a stiff roll.

Materials:

– Fabric of different colors / designs. Cut 13 x 17 of each. �
– Interfacing. Cut 13 x 11. This is 6 inches shorter than the roll fabrics.
– Gross grain for sling. Cut according to your preferred length.
– Ribbon for lock. I replaced that green ribbon with the leather cord below. Something brown looks better with my red flower-y fabric.

1) Pile fabrics for sewing, right sides together. Interfacing is 6 inches shorter because you will have to fold the fabric to make pockets for your paintbrushes.

2) Do not forget to insert the cord at the side.

3) Measure 3-inch apart points on one end of the assembled pile. This end should be the one near where you inserted your cord / ribbon (see step 2).

4) Insert your gross grain using these points as your guide.

5) Sew around three sides of the pile. Do not sew the side where there is no interfacing (opposite of the edge where you inserted the grossgrain). Cut the corners.

5) Turn inside out.

6) Fold the side that you did not sew (the one with no interfacing) and sew. Now you have a square-ish thing with stiff and flimsy parts. Fold the flimsy part towards the stiff part and pin.

7) Sew all the way around.

8) Mark the pockets for the paintbrushes and sew. Most of my pockets had a width of .75 inch. The biggest was 2 inches for my boyfriend’s thick brushes.

9) Sew each pocket.

And you’re done.  Easy as Ginny Weasley under the fingers of that kid Harry (oops, spoiler).

Action shot!

As you can see, my boyfriend is painting, which means that he is using his brushes. In other words, the stuff I inserted for this action shot and the photo before this are just any elongated thing I could find. There are several paintbrushes in there but those are no longer in their artistic prime.

So, move along. Oh yeah, happy sewing.