pencil bags

Aug 30, 2011

I am blessed to have the lovely Jessica of Balancing Everything fame as one of my best friends. Last week she whipped up some pencil bags for her children and I immediately fell in love. She is one of the most creative people I have ever met and I regularly swoon over her creations. She told me to bring over some fat quarters and zippers and she would teach me how to make some for my family.

I loved her Japanese fabric, but I let my children pick out their own stuff and design them in their own style…and then Jessica sewed for us today! I barely helped with pinning and unpicking, but perhaps my picking up the playdough, getting the toddler dressed, and our lovely conversation made up for my lack of sewing contributions? Maybe, just maybe, I will be brave enough to attempt it on my own so I can have my own super-duper adorable bag too!

I don’t know why they are showed up all wrinkly in the pictures. They lay flat quite nicely in real life. Maybe the fact that Keziah was taking the pictures with little ones crawling all over her has something to do with it?

Keziah’s

Annesley’s

Fisher’s…with his praying mantis

Blythe’s sans the initial…I guess she thought the initial was childish.

The children have already filled them up with their colored pencils and are silly excited for their Nature Studies classes this fall. I know I could have gone out and bought a cheap plastic pencil case, but cheap plastic doesn’t speak to my soul. Homemade. Cotton. Felt. Those are the things that connect with me and I love taking the time and effort to give my children homemade treasures…and having friends to help me do so!