Christmas gifting :: cable pouches

Trying to buy gifts for teenagers – too cool for the beloved obsessions of their childhood, too trendy to allow for too much advance organisation – is a tricky business. Buying for other people’s teens is even harder. Trying to balance the desire to get something they want or is useful, without shifting away from surprises too early, can be tricky.

Our two eldest nieces are at that stage. After speaking with my sister in law, I decided I would send cash, but they are also still young enough that its still nice to have something tangible to open. Instagram came up with the answer, when I saw someone on my feed sewing cable pouches. If the teenage nieces are anything like the teenage children, leaving the house requires a mass of cords, cables, adapters, jacks and headphones that makes the amount of cabling in the curly cord of my childhood landline look like amateur hour. Add in the constant screeches of “that’s MYYYYYY CHARGER CABLE GIVE IT BACK”, and the pouches seemed like the best idea since wifi.

Popping over to the designer’s site, I found myself down a rabbit hole of bags and pouches and cases. I love a good pouch, but I was on a mission. Somehow, I summoned the willpower to ignore everything but the search bar, and found the pattern I needed. Was it simple enough I could have worked it out? Sure. Was it worth the effort when I could just buy the pattern? Not a chance. Ca-ching went my little Apple Pay notification, and I was off and racing.

I pulled fabric. I cut the pieces. I had two days until the last chance to post. I…caught the plague from the kids. The best laid plans of mice and men and all that jazz.

And so, into the container went the pouches, just waiting to be assembled. Off into cyberspace went a message to my sister in law, letting her know the gifts would be delayed. Into bed went I, and slept the days away. Christmas came, and went. I snuck into the fabric shop for binding. New Years too, swiftly came to pass. Finally, two days short of Twelfth Night, and technically still in the Christmas season, I was able to pull out my machine and get them finished. An hour was all it took, once I actually found that hour.

Before I could post them though, there was one last job to do. While their use was clear to me, who knew what they were, I wasn’t sure the recipients would intuitively understand what the heck their crazy crafty aunty had sent them this time. To avoid any confusion, I created little info cards to slip inside.

A quick trip to the bank for the ever appreciated moolah, and they were wrapped and posted off. I felt much better about sending cash as the main gift, when there was a little something useful and pretty to pop it inside of.

One of the downsides of being a homeschooler, though, is having an audience for every single project. “What’s that? What are you making?” is often rapidly followed by “can I have one too?”…

Guess who has four cable keepers on her 2023 to make list?