World's Easiest (Pen or) Pencil Case

Why would you want a pen or pencil case, anyway? To keep all the writing implements in a larger bag contained, so that you do not go groping around forever trying to find one. (They are easier to find stuck together.) Or, if you are deranged, or an artist, or a parent, or something, it might be that you have sets of writing implements for different purposes (ones the child may have, ones the child should not touch, ones I am doing this drawing with, ones that are safe for work...) in which case you will want to keep them separated and you might want quite a few cases.

The reason this is the world's easiest pencil case is that it has no closure. It works anyway, I promise, although you end up prodding at it a bit to select a particular writing implement. This is a great scrap fabric project. Actually, I had to measure finished ones to figure out about how big I normally make them.

What you need:

One strip of lightweight fabric, about 3 inches (10 cm) wide by 31 inches (80 cm) Uh, no, these are not precise conversions. You're not really going to cut exactly this, are you? You're going to cut something in the vicinity that fits in the scraps you've got. I often end up making it out of two pieces, roughly 3 inches by 16 inches.

(Optional) A short piece of ribbon. Sometimes I use about an inch; sometimes more like 2. It's a loop for putting a carabiner or a finger through.

A sewing machine. I use a serger, thus the quarter-inch seam allowances. If you use wider seam allowance, use wider scraps, too.

An iron helps a lot. You could skip all the pressing steps, but then you'd have to use more than one pin.

How to do it:

1. Sew the fabric into a loop. Put the short ends together, right side to right side, and sew them. (If you have two pieces, you will do both ends.)

2. Turn right side out, and press.

3. Fold your strip so that from the side, it looks roughly like this:

You've folded down about an inch at the top, and then folded the bottom up so it overlaps that flap by about a half-inch. Give or take. Like, if they overlap by a centimeter, which is really nothing like half-an-inch, that works fine too. This is not science. If there is a righter side to your loop, it should be on the inside at this stage. (So if you used two bits, and you think one is the lining, that's the one you should see.)

4. Press.

5. If you are using ribbon, fold it in half (right sides out, if it matters) and put it inside the top fold above the overlap so that its ends are even with the fabric ends. (If you have inadvertently made a crooked seam when you sewed short ends together, that seam should be the one that's on top now, and the ribbon should be on the side with the most overlap. Not that this has ever happened to me.)

6. Sew along both long edges. That's right, just run a long seam through the whole folded kaboodle down each side.

7. Turn right-side out.

Variations

If you have non-fraying fabric (felt, ultrasuede, fleece) you can cut one shorter strip, fold it over, sew the edges, and turn it right side out. So I suppose that's really the world's easiest.