Here in Germany, kids take these huge pencil case s with them, where they not only keep their pencils, but also small scissors, rulers, etc. They are usually made of some kind of – I don’t know, let me call it plastic or so 😉

I decided to sew one up myself for my schoolkid. I like laminated cottons a lot and they are made of non-hazardous material, that can even be used for lunchbags and is also suitable for baby aprons, etc. as it is BPA-free. Not to mention that it can be wiped off, so that’s another reason for why it’s great. I had once ordered this cute laminated cotton in the US:

Here are some of the additional materials I used:

Dark blue linen for the inside, some different colored rubber bands or elastics, neon polyester thread. You will also need a zipper, the lenght of it is to be determined when you have decided upon the size of your pencil case.

Basically, I have drawn a „large enough“ rectangle. Think about the sizes of the pencils that would be stored in it, or other possible contents. Then make that rectangle large enough to meet these sizes and add your preferred seam allowance (I usually go for one cm, that’s approx 1/2 inch).

The next step would be to round off the corners a little, needless to say that they should all look the same in the end 🙂

I have interfaced the lining fabric with a pretty stiff, but flexible kind of interfacing. It has a leather-like structure, can be ironed on and sewn. It’s called „Decovil“ in Germany.

I stitched on the rubber bands first, stacked the interfaced lining wrong sides on wrong sides to the outer fabric, the laminated one. Then, I opened the zipper up completely, sewed it on all around the outsides of the case and my last step was to bind the raw edges with a bias tape (made by myself out of a turquoise colored lightweight jeans fabric). This is what it looked like in the end:

Now, fold the two sides together in the center, close the zipper and you’re all set for school:

Although I made this one some time ago, my son is still proud of it today 🙂