Kid’s draughtsman’s pouch tutorial

This idea was born of a need to keep drawing notebooks and colouring materials together when travelling. It holds up to 4 A4 notebooks (though really designed for only 3) and 24 pencils/texters. Easy to carry and just folds open.

Inside

Materials

• 24 strips of fabric measuring 1.5 x 5 inches each in rainbow colours
• 4 different fabrics for the inside pockets, inside lining, outside, border and handles
• some ribbon for the handles
• calico fabric for the pencil pockets lining and the inside folder lining
• medium weight interfacing

A while ago I made a rainbow pencil roll using the same idea.

Square both strips.

size as the stitched strips and sew on

Cut 2 calico pieces of fabric the same size as the rainbow strips.

And sew together in 3 sides.

Turn inside out and iron flat. Take in the seams of the open side and pin.

Attach rainbow pockets to the outside fabric

Fold the outside fabric in two and place the rainbow pockets about 2 inches from the fold (I made a mistake on the photo and I attached the rainbow pockets 2 inches from the top).

Stitch around the edges first leaving the part facing away from the fold open.

Stitch on each seam between colours.

Now iron the interfacing to the wrong side of the outside fabric.

After folding the pocket in half, topstitch very close to the edge and then again 1/4 away from it.

Make a fold about 3/4 in from the bottom of the pocket and iron.

Place the pocket about 1 3/4 to 2 inches from the edge of the lining fabric and pin in place as per photo below. Stitch along the bottom of the pocket.

Do the same with the other side.

Pin the sides of the pocket to the lining fabric making sure you push the corner in a small fold as per picture.

Pin the sides and stitch.

The pockets are added.

Assemble outside and lining by placing both pieces wrong sides together.

Stitch around.

This is the front (as you can see, the mistake I made attaching the rainbow pockets made me cut the piece in half and restitch with the pockets facing in the opposite direction).

Finish binding the edges. My binding is made out of a double folded strip 2 inches wide.

Handles

I was inspired by this camera strap cover tutorial I saw though I didn’t follow the instructions.

Cut

• 2 pieces 2 1/2 in x 20 in of fabric
• 2 pieces 2 1/2 in x 20 in of interfacing
• 2 pieces 2 1/2 in x 24 in of fabric
• 2  pieces of ribbon 20 in long each

Take the longer strip and using a basting stitch sew all along the middle as per picture. When finished, pull the bottom thread holding the strip as you do it and spreading the folds along. Leave 1 1/2 in of fabric at each end flat.

Take the 20 in long strip of fusible interfacing and iron it to the 20in long strip of fabric.

Now take both strips and pin them with right side facing together and stitch along 3 sides leaving one of the short sides open for turning .

I found turning the handles very hard by the way. Once turned inside out, iron flat and sew the ribbon along the middle of the handle.

This is the finished handle (I replaced the ribbon with a different one when I realised I didn’t have enough for both handles, that’s why the next picture features a different ribbon).

Pin the handles not too wide apart, about 2 inches from the sides.

And about one inch in.

Stitch as per picture below.

This is the finished piece.

One side.

And the other.

Closeup of handles.

Pouches.

Easy open and close.

Easy carry.

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My book Turnabout Patchwork

“Turnabout Patchwork. Simple quilts with a twist” is all about playing with blocks – making a block, slicing it up, and turning or repositioning the pieces to make a completely different block (sometimes two smaller blocks) to yield endless quilt tops.

• Order Turnabout Patchwork on Amazon

Buy individual chapters of my book

Now that my publisher is going out of business I have bought the rights to publish my book. Now you can download individual chapters. Each digital download is a bundle with 4 quilt patterns in it.

• Block Modern shoofly.

• Block Quarter snowball.
• Half square triangles and squares block

As well as the instructions and fabric needs to make the blocks you’ll find a section on quiltmaking basics at the end of the pattern that discusses:

• Tools
• Squaring up blocks
• Borders
• Assembly and quilting
• Binding

See all the quilts in the book in a real life project