Keeping up with the trend

Apart from Hannah Montana and the Jonas Brothers, the tweens/teens in this part of the world are going crazy over this. Yesterday, my daughter showed me her best friend's new pencil case which she had bought from Smiggle. It's one of those trendy pencil cases made entirely of zippers. If you haven't seen one, it looks like this...

It's cute...12 nylon zippers sewn together, with zipper pulls in alternate ends. What I don't like about it (as with any sewn item) are the exposed seams on the inside. Can you imagine what it looks like, with the 12 zips stitched together along their long sides? I want something that looks as good on the inside as it does on the outside. I gave it a bit of a thought, drafted out my plan, sat down on my machine till late last night and came up with this...my own version of the zipper pencil case.

First side

Reverse side

Side view

Inside (clean isn't it?)

Short side seams concealed within a fabric strip

With some good stuff
I decided to use only 6 different coloured zippers (instead of 12), alternated with fabric. It was a bit tricky to sew together, but you know me, I work with zippers my own way (that means, for as long as I can avoid using the zipper foot, I will). I had to make sure my seam allowances were accurate or else the zips would not line up correctly in the final assembly. I made great effort to make the inside really neat. No raw edges exposed! And it is pretty sturdy as I had the fabric strips interfaced. Finished size is 8 3/4" long by 5" wide.

By the way, Lincraft has its own interpretation of the zipper pencil case. It makes use of the chunky, open-end type of zippers. Anyone interested to try that one out can view and print the 'how to' from here.

I am happy with the way my own version turned out. Considering I was very uninspired to work on anything for the past week, this project was a nice challenge. Hope you liked it!