One of the things on the long list of stuff for the floral fancy workshop was a pencil and a fabric marking pen. Clearly I had pencils, but the fabric marker was on my shopping list - I decided that I needed a pencil case to put them in, and as I wasn’t sure exactly what the pencil was for I also looked out a rubber and a pencil sharpener (I like to be prepared!).
I do have a pencil case, two in fact, but they have a variety of pens in. And I could have emptied one out, as I did for the Adult Learning courses, but I also realised that once again the answer could quite easily be that I needed a new one to take out with me, rather than the ones I had for storage!
So after a quick internet search I found the free tutorial for an easy pencil case on the Merriment Design blog. Doubly useful as earlier whilst looking for something else I found a square of felt which I could use, and of course my eBay stash of zips was bound to have something I could use.
As it turned out there was a zip that exactly matched the colour of the bright yellow felt square. I also had a piece of material left from the gift tag pouches, which is cute even though it’s a Christmas fabric, technically.
Starting to sew
This pouch is a departure from my more usual pouch style, and has a more traditional pencil case look to it, although the zip is on the front rather than the top. The free tutorial was also easy to follow, and I think in total I made this in well under an hour, which is pretty good.
And yes, the yellow isn’t perhaps a natural choice to go alongside this material, but I like it (though as you’ll know I do like bright colours and have always liked yellow!). I’m also a fan of these super long zips, as they make it much easier for a zip novice like me. But using an extra long zip and then cutting it down to size has been a game changer in these pouches - I’m not sure the same approach would work for dressmaking though, but I’m happy to be corrected.
As you can see I did go for the quick and rough and ready approach, and I’m ok with that.
I didn’t press anything as I went, and I used the thread which was already on the machine - but no matter as I still ended up with a fab new pencil case.
And yes, I’m even using a couple of the ‘procrastination pencils’ - the messages on them are great, these two say: ‘you can’t possibly work in an untidy room and ‘you probably need another coffee’ - both of which can be very true!