Here is a look back into the creation of POMclub’s November box. While I thought about doing something related to Thanksgiving (you might remember that November of 2014 boxes had faux turkey legs) I was really excited about the idea of soft pretzels, so I decided to go that direction instead.
First I had the idea to design a fabric so it looked like it had salt all over it. I designed a few with various shades of tan and ordered a swatch from Spoonflower to decide on the pretzel shade before placing my large order. Once the fabric was proofed, I ordered my big roll of twenty yards of fabric. When that arrived it had to be measured, cut and sewn into tubes. If you’ve ever turned skinny tubes right side out you’ll know that this part of the plush assembly was interesting. I had been thinking about the pretzels and how best to fill the tubes long before I started proofing fabric. Polyfil was problematic because it took such a long time to stuff each tube with small puffs of polyfil, and once filled there would be small gaps between each puff. I knew that I’d have to think of something else if I was going to make the pretzels a reality. Finally with some research I stumbled upon foam tubing. Again I had to request samples of various typos and sizes before finding one that was perfect, but in the end my fabric from Spoonflower and giant roll of foam tubing ending up arriving on the same day.
As you can see there were pretzels upon pretzels! Once twisted I had to hand sew the ends in place, and add the faces as usual. I watch a lot of Hulu & Netflix during this part of the process.
I had ordered some kooky “mustard pack” gel candy to go with the pretzels. It is lemon flavored or something, but looks like a pack of mustard which is just how I like a soft pretzel. I decided to make button packs with a pretzel and mustard to go with them.
I was afraid of the gel candy leaking during transport, so each one was sealed inside a small ziploc bag and then nestled inside a pretzel stamped drawstring bag.
Packing of the November boxes was made easier when my sister came over to help wrap and pack them up. She draws the line at any kind of sewing work though. Help packing up orders is awesome and I’ll take it!
I’ll be back again soon to show you what was shipped in the December boxes, and before we know it I will be sharing what shipped out at the start of january.
