stationery Archives - Page 2 of 3

Peacock pen case

At last! I finished the pencil case for my dear husband, with the embroideries of his comics adorning the outside.

I’ll show you how I did it. I thought it out before beginning, but it was the first one I ever made and shows a certain amount of evidence of that fact. It is approximately 3″ by 6.5″ by 1″.

To make one just like this (sans comics) you will need:
1 zipper, 22″ long (a lot of that was cut off but the overhang was convenient in the making; it must be at least 15″)
4 strips of elastic each 4″ long (mine was 3/8″ wide and I colored it purple with a Crayola fabric marker)
2 rectangles of fusible interfacing, 4″ by 7.5″ (I used a medium weight)
and the following five pieces in each of two fabrics, one for the outside and one for the inside:
2 rectangles 4″ by 7.5″ (the faces)
2 strips 2″ by 17.25″ (could be as narrow as 1″ and could be a bit shorter also)
1 rectangle 2″ by just over 4″ (if your zipper is closer to 15″ the 4″ measurement here needs to be longer, up to 6″; my shorter measurement was 2.25″ but that wasn’t a good idea)

Continue reading Peacock pen case

Gecko memo

Inspired by Craft Countdown #3, the business card case, I made a memo pad case for #8. I was also inspired by the fact that I had a big gecko iron-on that didn’t fit on the business card case.

I had bought some memo pads before the holidays, in case any small children needed entertaining with coloring and stickers, so I made the case to fit them: about a half inch wider, and probably somewhat more than a half inch taller, times two.

The pocket is a piece of stiff white fabric with each edge folded in a half inch, and the open edge tucked under again (so it is folded down by 1/4″ twice). I stitched very close to the raw edges on the sides and bottom to keep the seam allowance fabric from scrunching when the memo pad was inserted.

The cover was a little flimsy, since it was just thin felt, so later on I decided to add a small pocket to it mostly to stiffen it up. I then had a bunch of uneven stitch lines, so I thought I needed either more stitching, or less. Since less would have been difficult, I went around with a zigzag. I like the result.

Trio of bookmarks

Craft Countdown #5 was bookmarks. A few years ago I bought a pack of plain bookmark-sized cardstock to make bookmarks for friends as Christmas gifts. That was still bumming around my stash so I thought for variety in the Countdown I would make some bookmarks.

It helps in endeavors like this to have an obscenely large sticker collection.

To be fair, that file also holds greeting cards.

Unfortunately, the eyelets I bought in the scrapbooking section of a store were incompatible with the pliers I bought in the sewing section of the same store! I had to shimmy a few smashed eyelets off the pin of the pliers with another pair of pliers before I gave up. And now I should sort them out of my bin of eyelets so I don’t have this experience again.

But without further ado, the finished bookmarks:

And, a Happy Birthday to my Aunt Liz!