Wednesday, December 29, 2010

Patchfolio #2

The last holiday gift was another Patchfolio. I made one of these for my youngest son for his birthday earlier this year and blogged about it here: http://stitchingirl.blogspot.com/2010/02/mini-wrapfolio.html
This time, I wanted to use those cool Twistable Crayons that seem to be at the height of interest right now for the elementary aged girls as this was to be for my 10 year old niece.
I measured and remeasured, cut (and recut!!), and thought I had the perfect size for this set up.
This is the fabric I chose for the inside of this patchfolio and the pocket. I just love the butterflies but the picture does not show the irridescent gold that outlines each one - truly pretty.
For this patchfolio, I pieced the front just like the original pattern called for with one modification. I only used one fabric, the one from the inside, and the rest were ribbons that I had laying around. I chose different stitches from my machine to sew the ribbons to eachother and was very pleased with the result.
However, I must have measured incorrectly! The patchfolio was too small for the pad of paper that I had chosen. I found a smaller one and that worked out just fine. I had seen this type of elastic closure on another website with a similar patchfolio and thought I would try it - it looked easy to use and easy to assemble. The end result is not that great - I much prefer the wrapped style where the patchfolio is long enough to wrap around and totally enclose the end with a velcro fastener like I did the first time. I just like that it is much neater looking and I think would have been much easier to use - the original pattern is made this way and I wish I had followed those directions. I did not have time to redo this and did gift it. My niece totally loved it and started using it right away which was very nice.
This is a close up of the patched front. I am completely happy with this!! So......when I make more of these, and I know that I will - I will make them wider so that they can close with velcro. I will also bind the edges with binding. I'm not sure what I am doing wrong, but my satin stitch just does not completely cover all the layers even when I do two rounds as was done this time. There are definitely more of these in my future - all the rest of my kids want them and I think they are great take alongs for trips in the car for kids. Everything is there for them to entertain themselves for quite awhile. Love it!!





1 comment:

hakucho said...

Love the patchfolio. With the twistup crayons it really was a very nice gift :)

My boys always loved their twist-up crayons, even though they weren't crayola brand. I even had something similar, colored pencils that twisted up. I know I loved those as well :)