Jacket: Sussan

Top: Glassons

Jeans: Sussan

Shoes: Camper

 

It has been ridiculously cold in Melbourne over the last week – luckily I have the snuggly polar fleece pencil scarf that I sewed for myself a few weeks ago!

I was inspired by this scarf from Etsy seller Saracarr, but she’s been on her “small break” for months, and I couldn’t wait any longer, so I decided to DIY one of my own.

I would have knitted it, but my needles are otherwise occupied as I’m two-thirds of the way through a Dr Who replica scarf for The Sophisticate:

Instead I decided to make one out of polar fleece, which is cheap and easy to work with. $15 bought me all the materials I needed (plus plenty leftover for next time!)

So, here’s how you do it!

First, choose your colours! You’ll need black for the pencil lead, beige for the wood, pink for the eraser, yellow for the metal band that attaches the eraser to the pencil, and a base colour for the pencil itself. I chose blue.

Next, cut the shapes out. Do everything in double thickness so you have pairs of everything because you’ll be sewing it together at the end.

You’ll need little black triangles of black for the lead. For the wood part of the pencil cut a shape like a short, squat picket with the pointy end blunted (that where you’ll attach the lead). The pencil, eraser, and metal band are all rectangles, and make sure that they’re all the same width as the bottom of the picket shape. One end of the pencil part can be given a wide zig-zag edge if you like.

Attach the lead to the wood…

…and the zig-zag end of the pencil to the wood. For this seam I just laid the pencil part over the wood part and sewed the two pieces together. The fleece fabric doesn’t fray, so you don’t need to worry about finishing the edges.

Move the cat off the remaining pieces of fabric.

I decided to sew three parallel lines along the width of the yellow to give the impression of the crimping you usually find on the eraser attachment.

Attach the yellow band to pencil and the pink eraser.

Repeat all steps until you have two identical polar fleece pencils.

Right sides together pin the two pencils to one another.

Sew together, leaving a smallish gap halfway along one side of the pencil through which you’ll turn the inside-out pencil right way out.

Once the scarf’s the right way out  finish that last gap by folding the edges in and finishing with a seam.

Now all that’s left is to give the whole thing a good iron

Then don the finished product and go out and brave the cold!