The potion holder

aka: The potion scroll(s)

For transporting glass bottles to faires and conventions

A large roll of curly patterned green fabric, bumpy due to being filled with potion bottles, beside a smaller one bottle potion pocket, and a three potion miniature scroll of the same green fabric, laying on a wooden table.

A large pile of potion bottles laying on a grey carpet, jumbled and in a mess.

A three pocket smaller potion scroll, curly green floral fabric sewn into three pockets with top flaps, along with a strap to tie it closed after rolling them up, laying on a wooden table.

A corner of the green fabric with a metal ruler beside it, measuring four centimeters from the top seam of the main fabric broadcloth, and a little seam sample beside it to be measured to.

Two scrap samples of fabric, with the required lengths written on them, beside the corner of the broadcloth, but showing it from the back.

The first pocket taped into place, as seen from the back of the broadcloth with three horozontal lines of tape going down the fabric, with the two scrap samples beside.

The front of the fabric, with the first vertical line of thread having been sewn in to make the first four vertical pockets along the side of the fabric, and white painters tape being used as a guide for where to run the sewing machine.

The first three rows of pockets sewn in, with the tape removed from the first vertical row, and four potion bottles filling the four pockets to ensure the size is correct, and the seam along the left side of the sheet now finished.

A full view of the potion holder sheet, mostly covered in tape lines vertically and horozontally from the original space setting of the pockets to creating guides for the vertical lines,and all of the sewing being put in with the first line of sewing, which was doubled after removing the tape.

The back of the fabric before removing the tape, which consists of just the five lines of tape securing the locations of the tops and bottoms of the pockets from behind, and several smaller strips of tape holding down the center seam so that it will always fold in the correct direction when sewing overtop of it.

A metal grommet installed in the corner of the potion scroll in the center of the seam, with a table full of miscellaneous supplies and tools in the background.

Kabutroid's signature K dot T dot written on the back of one of the pockets, under the fold so you would need to lift up the fabric to find it.

A close photo of one of the pocket flaps, with a white potion bottle created out of white embroidery thread with somewhat swoosh type of diagonal lines, overtop of an area with swirley yellow-white patterning, somewhat hiding the bottle, and equally making it look like magic surrounds it.

The finished sheet, currently empty, sitting on a wooden desk. The fabric fluctuates from dark green to light green in its pattern, and the sheet consists of fifty six regular sized pockets and four double size pockets along the right side, with two straps attached to that side to allow it to be tied closed when it's rolled up.

The back of the sheet, with all tape removed, on a wooden table. The tops and bottoms of all of the pockets are now visible, and the tie straps are shown being strung through a small loop in the back middle to keep them from hanging down when the sheet is held up for display.

The potion scroll now filled with potions, the tops of two of them poking up in front of the closure flaps as they would for display when on sale, and one of the bottles having a small brown paper tag hanging out, saying a swampy breeze, the potion inside.

The scroll now rolled up with all of the potions inside, and tied closed with the straps. Beside it is a tiny one potion cloth pocket of the same material, and beside it the three potion scroll, rolled up and tied.

Directly in relation to the potions in the Spirituality section, since even beginning those, I had been pondering how to transport them to faires and events and the like. The plan was always to make a giant sheet of fabric with a ton of little pockets on it to hold all of the potions inside of, and it had been rattling around in my head for years and years. A moss-green fabric perhaps, sew on... little rectangles of cloth maybe? It all seemed very difficult, and I hadn't had a properly working sewing machine, so hand-stitching it was completely out of the question. And then, I bought a sewing machine on Facebook Marketplace, and things took off. We finished the merchant bag in short order, and my mind immediately turned to this long-waiting project.

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 to 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.