This really has been a week of starting lots of projects and getting nothing finished!

But today I made 2 small wonky star sewing cases with coordinating pincushions. I took photos as I went so I thought I’d include them in case anyone would like to make something similar. The sewing cases are 5 inches square and I used 5 inch square wonky star blocks and 10 inch layercake squares but it would be very easy to make one from charm squares and a length of jelly roll.

For one sewing case you will need:

6x 5 inch squares top fabric for inside, outside and pockets
2x 5 inch squares backing fabric (this won’t be seen)
2x 5 inch squares batting
1x 4 inch square felt
2x 5×4 inch rectangles of interfacing (optional)
1x length of 2.5 inches by about 40 inches fabric for binding

Step 1 – outside front
Take your 5 inch block/front fabric and make a quilt sandwich with one piece of batting and one 5 inch piece of backing fabric.

(I made wonky star blocks using tutorial by Victoria at The Silly Boo Dilly and scaling down the stars).

Step 2 – outside front ctd

Quilt as desired.

(I tried to do a wonky shadow quilting but I’d offer a warning – less is more –

And I added a little hand stitching, mostly to try to make my white star stand out because I, foolishly, hadn’t thought about it disappearing into the background fabric!)

Step 3 – outside back

Make a quilt sandwich using one piece of top fabric (this will be the outside back of your sewing case), one 5 inch piece of batting and one 5 inch piece of backing fabric.

Quilt as desired.

Step 4 – inside

Take your inside fabric pieces. This step requires four 5 inch square pieces of fabric but I used a 10×5 inch piece and made the vertical cut after the next step.

Step 5 – pockets

Take two 5×5 pieces (or one 10×5 piece) of your inside fabric from step 4 (above). Iron a 3.5 inch wide piece of interfacing onto the wrong side of your pocket fabric(s) aligning the interfacing with the bottom edge.

Fold down the top 1.5 inch of your pocket fabric(s) over the interfacing. Press and finish this edge as desired.

Step 6 – pockets ctd

Assemble as in picture below: Place one 5×5 inch square of inside fabric face up. Place pocket face up on top of it aligning bottom edges. Secure with pins.

Step 7 – binding

Make sandwiches of your inside/pocket units from step 6 (above) right side facing downwards and your front and back units (steps 2 and 3 above) facing upwards. Pin and bind as shown below. I used Jenna’s Quilt Binding Tutorial which you can find at Sew Happy Geek although I found the doubled binding fabric quite bulky on such a small piece and I will try binding with a single thickness of fabric if I make these again.

Step 8

Lay the back of your sewing case with the inside facing upwards, as shown below, and position your 4×4 square of felt as shown.

Step 9

Lay the front of your sewing case on top of the back + felt (step 8 above) as shown below. Pin and machine sew securely along the unbound edge. Begin and end your stitching line about an eighth of an inch from the top and bottom.

Step 10

Take a strip of your binding fabric and sew on to cover the machine stitching line you sewed in step 9 (above). Now the outside of your sewing case should look like this…

And the inside should look like this…

I made coordinating pincushions using 2 inch squares which you can probably work out how to make from the picture.