The compulsion to craft |

Sometimes I call it an excuse, sometimes it’s a whip.

Despite the angst I put myself through, I find I always have a better record of actually finishing stuff if there’s a looming deadline. This could be

an impending visitor (traditionally a woman guest is always bestowed a gift with fruit and kumkum on her forehead, but that’s too traditional, and yet I still feel compelled not to let her go away empty handed)
a trip where I will stay at someone’s house (well, naturally you take a hostess gift if you’re imposing on their hospitality)
meet a friend (because the pleasure of my company is never enough)
a child’s birthday (I’m too lazy or preoccupied to go out and buy the unexciting gift, all those standard games and my daughter thinks if I buy books for her friends it’s too boring)
an upcoming event (although that’s only happened twice so far)
an actual order

So today the school is celebrating Teachers’ Day, and naturally I felt I had to make something for my daughter to carry for her teachers. I thought of zipper pouches and actually cut out some fabric, but then dialled it down to more reasonable bookmarks.

Mark the spot

I had the ideal fabric, which I bought as a set of 30 50 cm x 5 cm precuts from Amazon.in (trying out affiliate links for the first time) (from China, I believe). Prints I wouldn’t normally buy, and the fabric isn’t very dense, but it turned out to be ideal for this project.

I interfaced the strips with non-woven interfacing,
folded each 50 cm (~19.5″) strip in half length-wise, right sides together
sewed up about a 1/4″ seam on the two long sides
turned each tube right side out
turned in the top opening by about 14″
inserted my label folded in half
topstitched the whole thing around, thus sewing the opening closed

I managed to find 14 unique prints in the lot, so each teacher gets a different bookmark. Yay! Turning the tubes right side out took up most of my time, plus since I ironed on the interfacing all at once and chained the seaming, those parts went quickly.

And hey, presto, not too long after midnight, I had my Teachers’ Day gifts all done and ready to gift.