The whole stable of pencil pouches

Hello, everyone. As the title says, I have finished the lot of the pencil pouches. Some are gifts for family and some are gifts for others.

As y'all can see, there is a variety of colors. After the first one, I switched to using zippers-by-the-yard that were purchased at the Houston Quilt Festival a couple of years ago. 

The black elastic on the back of pouches with black zippers was purchased for this and there is a lot still left. The white zippers are paired with white elastic which was in stash.

All of the face fabrics and linings and batting are from stash. Quilting cotton inventory for the win! 

This pouch is from the blog at Sulky.com,  where they forgot to include the lining attachment in the instructions--it isn't difficult to figure out, and using the zippers-by-the-yard makes it easy, too. The only change i made was to quilt the face fabric to the batting instead of using spray glue. It was fun deciding on the quilting pattern for each fabric.

The little puppy peeking out of the striped pouch was made a few years ago for use as a tuck-in in a future pouch and it has found its new home. There are more available tuck-in stuffies so the other pouches will probably get them too. 😀

Some of the little gifts are done

Hello, everyone.  It's a beautiful,  windy day in South Texas, and I'm working indoors on Christmas gifts for children.

These particular gifts are similar to a project that was done during Grandma Camp a while back: a pencil pouch. The pattern is from the Sulky.com blog, with some tiny adjustments. 

The first of several--only two are ready to take their bows today. Yellow quilting cotton, zipper by the yard acquired during the Houston Quilt Festival the year before last. 

Quilting cotton again, with a dress zipper from stash.

Well, the things from the quilt festival have been around long enough to be stash also.

The little alterations to the pattern: 1) instead of using basting spray to attach the batting to the external fabric, I quilted it; 2) the zipper is topstitched to improve its performance. The lining is not glued or quilted, but the topstitching and the top and bottom seams are enough.

The pencil pouch is a great way to use up fabric pieces that are reasonably sized but not huge. The yellow was actually pieced as there wasn't a wide enough rectangle as it was. 

These are also a chance to practice quilting in straight lines of one kind or another. There are some other pouches quilted and ready for their zippers and elastic straps, just ready for a few odd minutes at a time sewing. The planets was quilted in diagonally set squares and the yellow one was quilted in horizontal lines.