My oldest son, Aiden, is really into camouflage, he's 8 years old and going into the 3rd grade, why in the world would he like that!?! :) The first thing I am going to show you is something a lot of you may call me crazy for purchasing or allowing to be purchased for him, but you have to spoil them a little bit if your able right? And it ended up being the inspiration for our new pencil pouch.
They are always so darn picky about what brands they can have and if you try and buy them a notebook or folder that has a picture on it to show a little bit of personality it ends up getting covered up. I guess I can understand it in a way...as far as the folders they prefer plastic with brads and those generally don't have pictures, so it was heart breaking when he didn't get to buy those in camouflage, for him atleast, and last year after we spent twice as much buying notebooks with sports cars and footballs on them, he had to put big huge stickers on them to label. SO, this year I made him stick to the basics as far as those things go. One thing on the list was a zippered trapper keeper, and we found this beautiful Mossy Oak camouflage binder at Wal-Mart for ONLY $19.99. I gave in and told him he could have it but we were done with school supply shopping for the day if he chose that one, his NayNay was with us and bought it for him so I went ahead and finished up at Office Depot with the rest of the actual supplies. That only put me back around about $44, but we still need to get a backpack/lunchkit and all the cleaning supplies they require. What will I ever do when all 3 of them are in school?
They also need, instead of a pencil box, a pencil pouch to fit inside of the binder. THAT I told him I could SEW! And that my friends is exactly what I did today.
My boys you see have been getting incredibly jealous and wanting me to SEW them things since Miss Gracie gets so much made by me so I am trying to figure out things that will be Daddy and boy approved as well as won't get them made fun of.
The pencil pouch was a perfect opportunity for me to show a little special love and sew my big boy something for school.
I used a tutorial I found on Pinterest (My DIY Sewing Board) by Abernathy Crafts. I tweaked it a little bit and made a super huge mistake as far as interfacing goes hence the rounded corners, but he LOVES it.
When I was doing the search for pencil pouches that fit into a binder I found quiet a few tutorials, one of them had a clear vinyl piece for a window, which gave me the inspiration to make an orange window for his name.
If you look close you will see that it is inset, I used the zipper hole instructions from the tutorial to insert the name ( I realize this could have just been a patch sewn on, and I made it difficult, but he thought it was really neat watching me assemble it that way) I guess if you wanted to do the vinyl insert it would work the same way. Then ofcourse I have all these crazy stiches on my machine so I decided to play with them.
Nothing about this is perfect, but my son thinks it is, so that's all that matters.
When attaching the lining to the zipper they recommended using a special product to glue it down and prevent fraying...ofcourse I didn't have any so I just used the same step to cut a hole in my liner and then stitched it around the zipper as well.
I mentioned that I had an interfacing issue. I went to Joann's and I felt and rubbed all the interfacing...it was either paper thin or THICK, I asked at the cutting counter if what I had chosen was too thick, but she was a wee bit inexperienced I think so she was just told me it would work and I went with it. Actually, the camouflage is twill weight and the lining is duck cloth so I may have gotten away with no interfacing, but alas I used the THICK and I think it was a little bit too thick for this project.
Lesson learned though right!?!
I also elected to add a pencil holder on the back for him. I basically just folded a piece of fabric that looked to be around the correct size in half and pressed the top edges down. Then I stitched down the open side and the bottom and turned it and stitched straight across the top. After that I sewed it down to the back on the sides and bottom and made 2 lines of stitches down the center and we have a perfect pencil holder. I did that before assembling the pouch though.
You can see the fray there around my grommets but once again I am going to blame too much interfacing. I had a really hard time getting the holes cut out big enough to insert them, but this is for us so it will be just fine. I bought the grommets as well as the little tool from Wal-Mart and then I just followed the instructions on the back and used my hammer and it was easy as pie.
And there we have it, a brand new personalized pencil pouch that fits inside a trapper keeper.
Next time I will definitely use a much thinner interfacing but other then that this was a super easy and rewarding project.
Tutorial from Abernathy Crafts.
Happy sewing! Until next time!
What a great pouch! I need to try grommets sometime - it's great to hear that they are easy to install! I hope your son has a fun year at school!
ReplyDeleteThey were incredibly easy! And thank you he starts in a couple weeks...summer is never long enough but I might get a little peace again with 1 less :)
DeleteThat is fantastic. I have an Aiden as well and I know he would love everything about it, awesome job.
ReplyDeleteAiden turned out to be an incredibly popular name for boys that year and I'm not sure it's gotten any less trendy! Funny thing is I had never really heard it until I named him that :) thank you!
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