School Supplies

Our elder (for now--she'll be promoted to "eldest" soon enough!) child is headed to 8th grade this year, and it astounds me. In fear that I've been neglecting her--it's so much easier to sew for a toddler!!--I've set about coming up with some treats I can shower on her bit-by-bit in these last few days leading up to the big First Day. I think we'll save most of the mundane stuff--paper, pencils, etc--for the Backpack Fairy the night before school begins, but I wanted her to have some stuff now, too!

I found a great tutorial online at Craft Apple and modified it to suit our child a little better. I'd seen fabric-covered composition notebooks before, but I hated that once the notebook was full you had to toss it out, no matter HOW much you love the fabric. And if it gets dirty, you just had to live with it, which kinda sucks, as far as I'm concerned. Plus, I always lose my pen or pencil, so I wanted a little pocket on the inside.


So this is the variation I came up with. I made some construction changes, since I wanted to streamline the process and felt that some of the techniques she was using didn't meet my needs. Mine's removable and machine washable, and it has a double pocket on the inside, big enough for notecards and a pencil.


I'm thinking in the next iteration I'll add a little pen loop at the side maybe? and definitely a larger pocket for those random handouts that always get folded in half and then lost--she'll have lots of those, I'm sure. And maybe handles?? How about little handles for carrying?? Oooh...

My Sweet Husband likes the solid fabric cover better, but he says it's because he prefers the print--hard to blame him, since he's such a boy. I love the floral piecework on the diagonal--so sweetly summery, I wanted it to remind her of vacation all year long. I'm sure I'll make a few more for her this week, and maybe even have some up in the shop once the cart is running again--I want one for ME, now, and think these'd be a great little gift item for the holidays.