Fabric & Embroidered Pencil Pot

At the EG Scottish Regional Day in Edinburgh I bought some goodies from the fantastic assortment of stalls, I love ‘The Silk Route’ for its collection of theme packs & I bought 2 of these ‘Titania’ & ‘Teal’. ‘Oliver Twist’ is just wonderful for all kinds of dyed threads and hanks of yarn I wanted to buy everything as it has been so long since I have had the pleasure of browsing their selection of goodies, I stopped going to the Creative Stitches Show in Glasgow a few years ago when they stopped holding a stall there. I opted for 3 reels of cotton in variegated blues and greens & 2 bags of ‘Short Lengths’ dyed, yarns in greens & teals. Next a bag of ‘Crafty Notions’ mid green merino tops, caught my eye on the ‘Grassmarket Embroidery Shop’ stall, such a beautiful shade too I’m looking forward to incorporating it into a needle felted piece. ‘The little bead shop’ had a wonderful selection of seed bead tubes I bought 2 tubes; one of turquoise blue one in a bright sunny yellow.

The Embroiderers Guild Edinburgh branch had a stall selling a selection of theme packs and books they also had reels of thread, some vintage some slightly used and a selection of fabric in bundle wraps and single pieces, I opted for three different pieces of fabric in the end and went for colours I don’t normally choose to work with, Yellow /gold shot organza, red/purple shot lame and a beige cotton with red flowers…all at a very reasonable 50p each!
Some of these goodies came in handy for my latest project…..

This year we are going on a camping holiday, in the past when we had our caravan there was always room to store a basket of art materials to take and enjoy some creativity in the van. This year space is more precious and everything must fit in the car!

I have been looking at the different things which are available for storing artist materials & in particular pencils & sketchbooks. There are some wonderful handmade items available on Etsy such as Pencil rolls and sketchbook covers with slots for pencils etc.
Although I liked the idea of a pencil roll I would need a really lengthy one in which to store my sketch pencils, glue stick, 6 inch ruler, eraser, sharpener & my 72 Prismacolors, I want to take them all, choosing only some would be so difficult........

So I opted to design instead a fabric Pencil Pot, which would protect, store and allow me to use the pencils easily.

I figured I would need a thick supporting fabric so I opted to use some denim form an old pair of jeans with a layer of thick artist canvas on the inside and base. The top gathering fabric is a double layer of blue and green shot poly/cotton mix I love this fabric and have used in so many different projects & for the pocket; some thick curtain fabric from a sample book in a nice mid blue. For decoration....I choose the ‘Oliver Twist’ Machine Cottons & the pretty little turquoise blue seed beads.

And here is what I made.........

Ribbon drawstring closure with clear spring toggle to keep it securely closed when not in use. I found some green toggle/duffle buttons in my button box and added these on the end of the ribbon .....just because their colour matched so well.........

Side pockets for storing drawing pencils, art stix, ruler & glue stick

This is how it looks when the top fabric is folded down ...... all my pencils to hand

Machine embroidered flowers ..........

With hand beaded detail..............

I’m quite pleased with my little pencil pot looking & forward to using it on holiday!