Colored Pencil / Notebook Holder Tutorial

Today is Tamara's daughter birthday!  She is having a party, and my daughter is going!  This is what I made for her last night.  Yup, nothing like putting it off until the last minute!  That's how I roll!  :)  Anyways, I was wanting to make a tutorial so I took pics along the way!  Late last year I found these over at Skip To My Lou.  I changed the measurements just a tad because it didn't seem big enough for the length of the colored pencils.  My kids absolutely love them, especially for church!!

So to start off you are going to need 3 different fabrics.  I usually just buy 3 fat quarters and then I have leftovers to use for other things, such as making hair flowers.  Cut them into these pieces:

Front: 16"x12 ½"

Inside: 16"x12 ½"

2 pieces of iron in interfacing: 16"x12 ½"

Notebook Pocket: 7½"x10"

Colored Pencil Pocket: 10"x12 ½"

Iron all of your pieces so they are nice and smooth and ready to go.  Iron a piece of interfacing onto the backs of both the front and inside pieces of material.

Iron your colored pencil pocket piece in half...hot dog style...haha...that brought back memories of elementary school!  Line it up with the end of your fabric.  This is where you will sew it down.  I pinned mine down in a few places and removed the pins as I sewed it.  I have a hard time when I don't pin it because it tends to slide around.

Use a ruler and mark where you are going to sew your lines for the pencils.  I do my first mark 1¼ " inch in and then every 1" all the way across...there should be 11 marks...that will make 12 slots.

Now you are going to sew the lines.  Start at the bottom, well...the side...where you made your marks and sew up to the top, back stitch a couple times at the top.  I like using striped fabric here because it makes it a lot easier to sew straight!  

Here is what mine looked like when it was done.

Now take your notepad pocket piece, and fold under the top twice, press, and sew arcoss the top.

You will need to figure out where to line it up...I am still working on perfecting this one.  lol  You may have to try it a couple different times to get it right.  But you will put it on like this, and sew down the right side of it.

When you are done, fold it over and press it down.  The inside is now done!

I like to put an initial on the front.  This time around I did a letter and a flower.  I always use felt, because it's easy to work with and it doesn't fray.  I print out what I want on the computer, trace it onto some wunder-under and iron it onto the felt.  Cut it out and then iron it on.  I'm sure you all know how to iron stuff on!  :)  Anyways, since I am doing 2 things, I started with the flower, ironed it on, sewed it on, and then did the letter.

Not too bad...I need more practicing at sewing stuff on though.

Now you will want to attach some sort of thing to use to close it.  I usually use big buttons, but in this case, I used one of my ribbon flowers.  

Put your 2 pieces right sides together...like this...

Sew them together, leaving an opening along the top. Oooooh, I almost forgot.  You need to sew an elastic in at this time.  Looking at the photo above, you will want to put it in on the left side, between the 2 pieces.  Sew, turn and press.

Press the opening shut and then top stitch all the way around. And you are done!

There are lots of fun things you can do to these!  Here are some pictures from the last one I made...which just happened to be the same line of fabric!  I used a fabric flower instead of a button...I put some ric rac along the top of the inside pockets.  When you do this to the colored pencil one, sew the ric rac on before you start sewing it down.  And on this one I sewed fabric to the top of the drawing pad!!  Make it your own!  And have fun!

Oh, and I get my drawing pads at target....they are only $1.99...I've looked all over...and these are the best I have found!  :)