Now, I had a large sheet of this patterened green fabric that I'd oh-so-fortuitously found in a dumpster years ago, and had been holding onto (after washing) ever since. Now was its time! With the merchant bag made, another (several) portions of it went into here. It was an interesting pattern, it was a nice grass-green type colour, it would look incredible hanging up or on a table! Too patterned to use as a tablecloth for the shop, it would work perfect for a smaller-item display! And so we set out. I'd quickly ditched the idea of making like... 50 small rectangles and sewing those all on individually, and my brain quickly came up with a way of using folds in the fabric to create the pockets from a single sheet. We made a seam about a centimeter long, with enough slack at the top to cover up the "back" of the fabric when this was folded forwards to make the lip of the pocket, and, after some testing, made a second seam exactly 15 centimeters end-to-end below that, which when folded up and under the lip, the two seams overlapping, would nicely hold my typical larger potion bottle, with some extra room for wax sealing and a general not-too-tight fit. Some more testing (which would later become a three-bottle holder, and a single-bottle holder as well, because it was there, for my pocket-merchant-bag), we found that having the sides of the pocket 4.5cm wide would fit it just nicely as well. And so a plan to go full-scale was made. Pulling out a larger section of the fabric, we made a loooong stretch of one row of the opening seams, and entirely with tape, held all the folds in place so that the eventual 4.5cm vertical lines would hold everything together. After making a second row of pockets with tape, I'd decided that, since the second row was measured off of the first row's tape lines (from the fold in the fabric under the tape, not the tape itself), I didn't want to make a third row of pockets based on the measure off of a tape line, based on the measure off a tape line, too much asking for inaccuracy there. So since this was a loooong stretch across, we lopped it in half, and seamed the two double-rows of pockets together in the middle! I generally guessed at where to make this seam so that all of the pockets would be equidistant from eachother vertically, and by luck and happiness, it was essentially perfect! We went across that seam like twice, with another line of zig-zag stitch for added measure (with lots of folding and such to keep the frayed end of the fabric tucked inside it all), and we now had a sheet about 30 inches across, and four rows of pockets tall. A nice size, not too large, easy to handle, won't roll too big, good good. Also it would turn out, holds 60 bottles (64 pockets, -4 for double-width pockets)! So that's phenomenal. I technically already have slightly more than 60 as-is, but that would be well enough to bring to any faire shop, picking and choosing which to take with me and such. Also, I had several other odd-sized bottles and containers, which we would figure out later. For now though, with a sheet of fabric that has just a few sewn seams and a crapton of tape, we were ready to put this thing together fully! In come the vertical lines! After the first 3 or so, I removed the tape from those specifically to bottle-test them, and they fit just as perfectly as with the sample test, perfect! On the to the full thing! I used more tape still to mark out the vertical lines one at a time, adding the tape line to follow, sewing right on the edge of it, measuring another 4.5cm, tape, sew, measure, tape, sew, all the way across. For the length of fabric that I had, it turned out to be 16 rows of pockets. I added a seam to the sides, which props to the sewing machine, it was able to handle going through the like... 10 layers of fabric in the folded portions, though for the REALLY thick part right in the middle, I turned the sewing machine by hand to slowly punch through the massive block of fabric right there. Also to add, I periodically used a carpenter's square to make sure the vertical lines were all going 90 degrees from the top edge, adding a millimeter as needed to keep them all perfectly vertical. I'm sure everything being held in place by tape also helped with this. Fun fact, it was kinda fun to remove all this tape at the end, since sewing through it kinda perforated the tape, making a fun 'prrrrt' kinda tear every time I pulled off a small section of tape. Took a bit, and in the crazy middle seam portion some bits of tape are still stuck between the zig-zag part of the thread, which I'm not really concerned about since it's on the back, and it would be brutal to try to remove lol. Might come off after a washing or two, if/when it needs that over time. After the fun de-taping process, we doubled up the vertical lines for added strength, and made the straps. Those were attached with good ol' high-strength polyethylene fishing line for added strength as well, and a small loop was added in the back loop the straps through when it's open to keep them out of sight. Grommets were added to display it when it's open, and my signature was added in a hidden little spot like usual, behind and underneath one of the pockets. And then, as an added little bonus right at the end, there was this one strange spot that had a frayed hole from what looks like friction, possibly from the manufacturing process or something, so I took the opportunity to add a little embroidered potion bottle overtop of it for an added pop to catch the eye, which came out with an incredible swoop feel to the linework. Epic. And with that, after 20 someodd hours over several days, the potion bottle holder scroll was complete! Completed March 19, 2025 Minor edit not worth taking all new photos for: I moved that loop on the back one slot to the side, since when it's full and rolled up, this will make it grabbable as a carry loop of sorts, also the tie straps will have a bit more slack to go through there when open, possibly with double-looping through to avoid falling out. So just nudged that to the side a smidge. |