DIY: Handmade soft case for colored pencils

If you’re like me, you have been looking for a case to keep your colored pencils safe from breaking while transporting them. And by breaking, I mean the inside of the pencil, not the outside.

I didn’t want my pencils banging into each other. I was looking for a simple case, with the design I had in mind, but either I couldn’t find the one I wanted, or it was too expensive for a starving artist. So instead, I made one myself! And even though it took a lot of time and effort, I learned a lot about sewing and cloth-work.

Here is the finished product:

It’s not perfect, but it works!

What I did was use some cheap, thick, soft cloth I had previously bought at a craft store, cut them into the right sizes, and sewed them together, and presto! Easy right?

Well, as I said, it took a little work.

There are only three pieces of cloth needed for this. One large piece that I use as the base, and two thin strips that I use to hold the tops and the middles of the pencils. The bottom of the pencil is held by folding over the bottom of the cloth.

I added a middle strip because I was keeping in mind that the pencils will eventually be sharpened, which means they will get shorter, too short for the strip at the top.

The two thin strips are longer than the base cloth, so that you can tie them together at the end to keep the pencil case closed when it’s all rolled up.

Now for the hard part. To attach the pieces together, I had to sew a line on each strip (including the bottom ‘strip’) that would be used to secure each side of the pencil.

You can see it better here: