Custom Made Pencil/School Supply Pouch

I have been making and finishing several things, but haven't had the time to post what I have made lately, so I will be posting a few items each week as I have the time.

Last week a quilting friend of mine emailed me asking if I could make her 13 year old granddaughter a pencil pouch for school. She wanted an 8.5" x 11" pouch with zippered pockets and a main zippered compartment. She didn't need grommets because it would go into her backpack and not her notebook. We all met to talk about the size and needs, and colors desired. I always ask for 3 color choices in case I don't have enough of one fabric and because I do like to accent with a 2nd or 3rd color too. Pink was the main color choice, with turquoise and violet as the other two choices. No cutesy pie novelty fabrics (she is nearly 14 years old), no worries because I don't have many novelty fabrics anyhow.

I thought a few days about how I would go about making this pouch and sewing in the zippers needed. I sketched out ideas and visualized in my head not only the final look, but how it would work with the sewing part too. With testing other people's bag patterns and making my own changes on some, and even creating a few of my own designs, I knew basically what I wanted to do, but of course in the actual making of something is when you see what works or not. I decided to sew a smaller version first to decide if I needed to make changes. I am so glad I did sew the smaller one first because I went about installing the zippers differently on the final version than on the test version. The small test version came out looking fine, but I didn't like the way I sewed the zippers in place with strips of other fabrics in between each zipper. It looked great, but I didn't like the sewing of it that way. I even changed the final large version a bit from what we had talked about originally, but I think that was a change for the better. I added a smaller zipper pocket inside the main compartment, making 5 zippers total instead of the original 4 pockets. I did this for 2 reasons, first if she is carrying money I thought it would be safer to use the inside zippered pocket, rather than the small outside pocket and second it made turning the bag right-sides-out through the zippered pocket so much easier! I also added a removable wrist strap, making it easier to carry if she needs to carry this separately instead of inside her backpack, but the strap can easily be removed if not needed.

I took this for show and tell at our quilt group on Thursday, and also gave it to my friend there. Her granddaughter started school this past Monday, so she had been without something for a few days. After my friend saw it, she told me her granddaughter loves Paris stuff, so the fabric I chose was certainly the right choice! Then later she asked for me to make another one for her younger granddaughter, using the same Paris fabric. So I will be working on making it this weekend. I hope her granddaughters love it and find it useful too! I plan on taking photos of the process and writing up a pattern for this too.

One side has a large zippered pocket. This French motif print had the colors she had requested, although the violet color wasn't as pronounced and I think ended up in the seams!

This side has a large zippered pocket and a smaller one centered below it. 

I made 5 beaded zipper pulls with metal charms, using 3 of the heart charms and a flower charm and a leaf charm on the other two zippers.

This is the main compartment with a zippered pocket.

My label has my blog name on one side and my name on the other side.

I wanted some photos on our teak bench, so I could prop them up. The photos in the rocks are laying flat, but I guess you can't tell the difference much, lol! I am pretty proud of how this turned out, so I went a bit overboard on photos. This might work for other supplies too like knitting, quilting or stuff to have on hand when taking a car or plane trip? Might need to make one for myself to test out how I would use it.

This is a small triple zipper pouch I made to test how making a larger pouch would work. I sewed this differently than the larger pouch. I was glad I made this first, because I am much more pleased with how I made the larger pouch. While they might look similar, the larger one is sewn differently.

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