Cutlery Storage Roll - Tutorial

Do you have one of those 'good' cutlery sets? You know the ones, they get pulled out for Christmas and then for the rest of the year, take up a huge amount of space in an awkwardly large box.

Well, I decided to store them in a roll, like chefs knives. They take up a lot less space and still stay nice and shiny. You can see below, that they use about 1/4 of the space of the box. To make this a quick job, I used tea towels, as they are already hemmed around the edges.



You could use fabric, but you would want to finish the edges first. This would also be a great project to make use of souvenir tea towels, if you have a pile of them laying about.


Cutlery Storage Roll

You'll need:
Tea towels - For my 56 piece set, I used 3 jumbo tea towels (60 x 90 cm)
Piece of ribbon, tape or cord for the ties. I used 3 pieces of twill tape, all 1m long.


If you bought tea towels specifically for this job, then pre-wash them.

Lay out a tea towel and then lay out the cutlery along the middle. Make sure you leave a little wiggle room so that the pockets aren't too tight. The bottom part of the tea towel gets folded up and sewn to make pockets for the cutlery and the top part folds over when rolling it up to stop the cutlery from getting scratched.



Fold up the bottom of the tea towel and pin in between each piece of cutlery. I used the lines on the tea towel as guides for placing the pins evenly and a mark on a post-it note to make sure I made them all the same width.



Remove the cutlery and sew channels at each place that you have a pin. Again, I used the lines on the tea towel to make sure I sewed straight.



Now, add the tie to your roll. Finish the ends on the twill tape, by folding over twice and sewing or with some fray check. To find the point to sew the tape onto the tea towel, place the cutlery in the pockets and fold over the top flap. Place a mark halfway down the edge on the pocket part of the tea towel, not the top flap. Fold the tape in half and sew onto the tea towel at the mark. I also labelled the ends of my ties so I know what is in each tea towel without having to unroll them.



These are great for steak knives, servingware, picnic or outdoor cutlery sets too.