A friend's birthday was coming up, a friend who happens to love jewelry. I found her a fantastic pair of dangly earrings at Forever 21 and wanted to wrap them up (by the way, if you love chic but inexpensive jewelry, Forever 21 is a gold mine).
Because a simple box just won't do, I thought it would be a fun idea to sew a paper gift pouch and slip the earrings inside. It'll just take a few minutes to make it, I told myself. Just a few minutes.
Why I believed that is beyond me, because whenever I start a project thinking it'll take a few minutes, it always ends up taking a few hours. Always.
I started with some map paper and cut it to the size I wanted. I soon realized that the paper was too thin and would probably tear the minute I tried to slip something inside. To shore it up I'd need to line it with more paper. I knew I had some vintage sheet music somewhere, and thought that would be a nice complement to the map.
First I had to find the vintage sheet music paper. Then I had to cut it. Then I had to glue it. Then I had to wait for it to dry.
OK, so far we're not that bad time-wise, about 15 minutes behind schedule.
Now it was time to sew the thing. I hauled out my 190-pound Bernina and found a bobbin already wound with bright red thread.
Then I promptly lost the bobbin. You're probably thinking, eh, not a big deal. Well, it is a big deal when you have two cats. Because cats love sewing thread. But sewing thread doesn't love cats. It can kill them if they eat it. So cue the big anxiety attack trying to find the damn thing.
Husband comes upstairs, helps me look. We can't find it anywhere. Now I'm late starting dinner. I look for about 20 minutes more, then have to start cooking. The cats are locked out of the room. They don't know why. They're angry.
While I'm cooking husband finds the bobbin. Crisis averted!
After dinner I go back to sewing. That part goes pretty smoothly. I decide to make a closure with two buttons and some waxed linen thread. I sew on one button with regular sewing thread, but the thread keeps knotting up. The button finally pops off after I yank the thread trying to unknot it. Two big gaping holes are left in the paper.
By the way, by this time it's about 9:30 at night and fatigue is setting in. Somehow it never occurs to me, as it might to a sane person, to chuck the whole thing and just put the earrings in a box. Must not abandon the mission. Must not abandon the mission!
After realizing the sewing thread isn't going to work, I sew the buttons on using waxed linen thread. This goes much more smoothly. I manage to attach both buttons and the tie without anything coming off.
But I notice that the paper has already ripped a bit due to my handling. I hope my friend won't see it.
Exahusted, I finally finish. I give it to her the next day at dinner with some friends at a dimly lit restaurant. So dimly lit, in fact, that no one can really see what the pouch looks like.
At least I remembered to photograph it before I gave it away. That'll just take a few minutes, I told myself.