I’m always looking for new challenges with knitting or sewing and children’s birthday presents can present the perfect opportunity! I’d been wanting to make a zippered pencil case for ages, so seized the chance when a birthday party was coming up.
I had bought some coloured pencils and thought a case to go with them would be a nice gift. Rummaging around in my fabric stash I unearthed some suitable fabrics, a pretty floral ‘Oliver and S’ one for the outside and a bright spotty one for the lining. I used a tutorial from Design Sponge as my guide and worked out the dimensions based on the size of the pencils.
I used some iron-on wadding to give the pencil case some soft structure and then it was time to tackle the zipper. I don’t think I’d put a zipper in something for many many years so I wasn’t looking forward to this bit. Fortunately it was much easier than I remembered! The zipper foot on the machine makes everything easier and once I got my head around which bits went where, it was ok.
Next it was time to sew the base and sides together – again some mental gymnastics were required to work out how it all fitted. Some more sewing, then voilà! A lovely gift.
From start to finish this project probably took me around 1 1/2 – 2 hours but I now know how it fits together so it’d be quicker next time I try one.
Do you ever hand-make presents for friends? What are you most proud of?
Kylie x
Wombat & Poss 
It looks like you and I worked on the same thing, just different in style 🙂 Love the pink and the pencil case looks lovely!
Thank you Nurdan. I loved making the pencil case and I had a real sense of satisfaction after putting in the zipper and completing it. Have you put yours on your blog? I’ll have to take a look 😀
Lovely job! Pencil cases are a great ‘go-to’ project when I need a quick gift. I’ve made them with lots of cool fabrics including brightly coloured fake fur! Sewing the zipper into that was challenging!
Oh wow, Rebecca! I love the idea of fake fur, I can imagine how tricky that was to work with. Well done!