Crochet Pencil Pouch

Hi, everybody. Welcome to our live crochet event. I'm Brenda K.B. Anderson, and today I get to show you how to make this really cute pencil pouch, which is just called Pencil Pouch, for obvious reasons, right? This is a crochet project that's probably suited mostly for, I would say, an intermediate crocheter.

But if you're an advanced beginner or just a excited, confident beginner, then you could definitely work along with the video to get this done. It's mostly made out of single crochet stitches. There are some extra variations on that when we do these spike stitches right here. But for the most part, it's all single crochet, so it just helps if you are comfortable working back and forth in rows and working in the round and you're just kind of familiar with and confident with how to hold your hook. All right, so this is a live event, obviously, so if you have questions or you need extra clarification, if you just wanna say hello and tell me, you know, where you're crocheting from today, please just drop that in the comments section.

I'd love to hear from you. And also, before we start, I just wanna point out too that you can download the free pattern. The link is in the description, it's also in the comments section too, and that's free for everybody. So you can download it now, but it'll also be available later. So if you don't wanna do it now, you just wanna watch and follow along, that's fine too.

All right, so let's talk about the materials we're gonna need. So this pencil pouch has six different colors in it, and in the pattern, I label them, you know, color one through color six, and they start here with the tip of the pencil. That would be one, two, and then the lighter yellow is three and the gold is four and the gray is five and the pink is six. So one thing about this gray is I found a sparkly one, which I thought would be extra fun for the pencil, for the metal part. But, you know, if you don't have this in your local store, that's totally fine.

You can definitely use just a regular gray. There's another color in the same type of yarn, or another yarn without the metallic in it that's very similar in color and it looks great. I actually made another sample with this first before I found this one, so that works totally fine. These are all worsted weight acrylic yarns from, you know, you can get 'em in a big box store, you can get 'em anywhere really, and you can certainly substitute with cotton if you want to, or, you know, really any worsted weight acrylic yarn or cotton would work just fine or blend between the two of them would work fine. Or even if you have wool, that would be okay too.

It just might not be quite as stiff as my version. And actually, surprisingly, you don't need to have any extra structure pieces inside here. A lot of my really structured character-type bags, I will put some extra plastic canvas or something in it to give it a little extra structure. But we're just using densely crocheted fabric with a lining of densely crocheted fabric to give it structure. So I'll show you what I'm talking about here.

The tip of the pencil, well, actually, let me back up for a second. There's three main parts of this pencil. We have the tip and then we have the striped section, which is also connected to the silver section. We crochet that back and forth in turned rows here and then back and forth in turned rows there. And then we have a third section, which is the eraser.

So if you think about this pencil in three sections, kind of break it down, it just seems a lot more approachable 'cause when you look at this, you're like, there's a lot of things going on there, but really it's just three fairly simple parts to the pencil. So the first part is the tip, and like I was saying before, I used some crocheted inner structures to stiffen the pieces that I felt like really needed to hold their shape, like the tip of the pencil and the eraser. So this just gets slipped inside of here, so it's twice as thick and extra sturdy. So that way, you know, you can flatten this, but it does keep its shape when there's more stuff in it. You know, it looks pretty good.

So this is lined and the end of the eraser is also lined, and we'll get to that later when we start working on that. So you'll need your six different colors of worsted weight yarn and then you'll need a hook to go along with that. I am using a G 4 millimeter hook, but you will use whatever you need to to match my gauge or if you're substituting with a different yarn, as long as you're happy with the stiffness of the fabric that you're creating, then you should be fine, although that may alter the size of your bag. So if you're worried about being able to fit certain things in here, I mean, you could definitely go a little smaller and still be able to fit, you know, full length pencils in here. But, you know, if you're gonna change the gauge, you're going to end up changing the size of your pencil, so that's just something to keep in mind.

And beyond the hook and the yarn, you can use a couple of stitch markers just to keep track of your stitches. And actually I think you need six stitch markers and one of them should be a contrasting color. And then you'll need a zipper. So I say in the pattern to use a seven inch zipper, but if you don't have a seven inch zipper or if you want it in a certain color and you can only find it in a longer zipper, you can certainly shorten it and we'll talk about that a little bit later when I am inserting the zipper into my project. So I would say make the pouch first and then buy your zipper so that way you can make sure that you get one that's the correct length.

All right, so let's see, let's get started. We're gonna begin with the pencil lead part, the tip of the pencil. And just for the purposes of demonstration, I'm gonna be using gray instead of black for the lead part because I didn't think you'd be able to see my stitches very well if I did it in black. So just keep in mind, this would be the black section in your pencil. So to start out, we're going to create just a magic loop or an adjustable loop sometimes it's called.

So I like to do mine this way. So I draw a little E shaped piece, and then I will flip this loop over onto the yarn that's connected to my ball of yarn like this. And then I'm gonna insert my hook underneath that strand, and I use my finger to hold where the yarns cross, and then I just sort of shorten it up a little bit. Then I just make one chain and that anchors my loop and I'm ready to start working the directions. So in the first round, we're gonna place six single crochets into this loop and then we'll tighten the loop up.

So a single crochet, you'll insert your hook, yarn over, pull up a loop, yarn over, pull through two. That is a single crochet. So we're gonna do that five more times. Insert, pull up a loop, yarn over, pull through two. That's two, we'll do it a little more quickly.

Three, four, five, and six. All right. All right so then we've got our first round here, and then we do not need to join our rounds, we can just continue working in a spiral. So all that means is we don't do a slip stitch at the end of our round. The next, let's see, I think it's three more rounds.

Let me just double check the instructions. Let's see, two, three, and four. Yep so rounds two, three, and four, we're just increasing three stitches per round. So if you take a look at this pattern, this will tell you exactly, you know, where your stitches go and where your increases are. So what this means is two single crochets in the next stitch, one single crochet into the next stitch and then it says three times.

So whatever is inside those brackets, that's what you're working three times. So we're just gonna repeat this section, one, two, three. So we'll do two single crochets into the first stitch. One, two, and one single crochet into the next stitch. And right then, let's see, before I get too carried away, I'm gonna mark the beginning of my round so that I don't get confused where that is.

So that was the very first stitch that I did. All right, now we're gonna repeat that little section again. Two single crochets into the next stitch, one single crochet into the next stitch. All right and I just wanted to say hi to Rebecca and Debbie and Raquel also. Hi everybody, I'm glad that you joined us.

I'm glad you're here. All right and then our last repeat, one, two, and then one in the next stitch. Okay, so we should have a total of nine stitches around, and we're just gonna continue rounds three and four doing a very similar thing. Two in the next stitch, and then one single crochet into each of the next two stitches. So here's our increase, one, two.

And then two each into their own, one and two. Now we're gonna repeat that section again. We're gonna do an increase one, two, and then one single crochet into each of the next two, one and two. And two into the next stitch and one and two. All right, now we're gonna do round four.

We're on round four here. So we're gonna do two into the next stitch and one into the next three stitches. One, two, we'll mark that, and then we'll do one, two, three. You can see this is starting to make a cone shape. One, two, one, two, three.

If we had done six increases in the round, that would make a flat circle, but this is about half of that so it ends up making sort of a pointy cone shape, which is perfect for the tip of the pencil. All right, we've worked through round four here. You can see the kind of shape it's making. And then we are going to fasten off. We'll do a little slip stitch and fasten off, and then we are going to switch colors, okay?

Or if you prefer switching colors in a different way, that is completely fine, too. You can do that your own way if you have a different method that you prefer. All right, so I fastened off there, and now we are going to begin working with the second color, color B. And we're gonna pull up a loop right from the same place where we made our slip stitch. But honestly, it doesn't even matter where you pull it up.

You can start it anywhere all the way around here. As long as you're just working into those same stitches, it doesn't actually matter where you pull up your loop. Okay and then we're gonna chain one, that doesn't count as a stitch. Oops, I'm gonna move this over to where my slip stitch is, just because, not that it matters, but just because that's what I told you to do in the pattern and it might be confusing. All right, so we've done a chain one, and then we're gonna single crochet.

Here we are on round five. Chain one doesn't count as a stitch. That means we never work into that stitch. And then we're gonna single crochet into the next four stitches and two single crochets into the next stitch and we're gonna do that section three times. Okay so we're gonna start in the same stitch.

We'll do one, two, three, four. And then two into the next stitch, one and two. One, two, three, and four. And two into the next stitch, one and two. And one, two, three, and four.

And two into the next stitch, one and two. And then we will begin working. We don't have to do a join, but we're gonna start working in that very first single crochet of the round. So when we're working round six, that's why I'm inserting my hook here. That was the very first single crochet.

We're gonna begin with that one. We'll do one single crochet into each of the next five stitches so we start right there and continue around. Okay and we're just going to be, I'm not gonna show all of this because we would never get through this whole pencil just in this tutorial, this one hour tutorial. But I just wanted to show how, you know, you start a new color and you just begin working around in a spiral there. So as you work this part of the pencil, the pencil tip, you're going to be increasing by three as you go around and around and around and you'll place some stitch markers to help you keep track of where to put your increases.

So that will help you out in rounds 7-11. And then the very last round before you switch colors to the yellow, you're just gonna do a single crochet in each stitch around, okay? And then you'll fasten off. So let me show you what the next step is after that. All right, here we have already worked the lead part of the pencil and then the wood part of the pencil and we did our last round of just the plain single crochet and round 12.

And this, I'm showing you this right here, this is the spike stitch round and this is what makes that sort of zigzagged, you know, edge where the yellow kind of dips down into this color. So I'm gonna show you how to work those spike stitches. So the directions on how to make the spike stitches, that is inside your pattern so you will just look at right here in the special stitches. It'll tell you exactly how to do it and what the abbreviations are. And I should actually point out, these are the abbreviations for the whole pattern right here in orange so you will have all that information in your pattern.

So as you start, you just pull up a loop, just like we did before when we changed colors, and then the first stitch was a regular single crochet. Then we're doing a spike stitch that goes down into the round below and then another spike stitch that goes two rounds below. That's what makes this really long color that dips down here. And then a shorter spike stitch and then a single crochet and then we repeat that all the way around to here. Well, all the way around the whole thing.

Now I'm gonna just demonstrate this whole process right here on the end. So we'll work a single crochet. So this would be how you would start out over here when you're first beginning. You work a single crochet, just a regular single crochet. And then you're gonna work a spike stitch into the round below.

So instead of working it in this section where you normally would under those two loops, you're gonna work it at the base of your stitch. So where the post goes into, you just follow that down and put your hook in there. So pop it through to the back and you're gonna yarn over and pull up a loop and you can pull this loop up to the height that it needs to be. Don't make a really tight stitch down here. You're just gonna kind of pull up on that loop and make it a little longer.

You're gonna yarn over and pull through just one loop and then you're gonna repeat that. Insert, pull up a loop, and yarn over, pull through that one and then you're gonna yarn over and pull through all three. Okay, I'm gonna do that another time so you can see that happen again. But the next stitch is going to be a longer stitch. So instead of inserting our hook here, how we normally do, or here, which is where we just went, we're gonna go all the way down here, so that's two rounds below.

So we just insert our hook, yarn over, pull up a loop. And again, you're just gonna make this as tall as it needs to be to reach. And then yarn over and pull through one and repeat that again. Insert in the same place, yarn over, pull up a loop, yarn over, pull through one, and then you're gonna yarn over and pull through everything just like that. Now we're gonna make this stitch again, which is a shorter spike stitch.

So instead of working it here, we're gonna work it down here. So we insert our hook, yarn over, pull up a loop, yarn over, pull through one, insert in the same place. Yarn over, pull up a loop, yarn over, pull through one. Whoops, that was accidentally two. Yarn over, pull through everything.

Okay and then we'll do a single crochet right here and then we're going to do a spike stitch down below 'cause we're just repeating that section again. Pull up a loop, yarn over, pull through one, insert. Pull up a loop, pull through one, yarn over, pull through everything, okay? So in order to, let's see, I think I missed a stitch here. Yeah, we'll go in this one.

I think I missed my stitch when I did my single crochet, that's what I did. All right, let me fill that back in, pull through everything, oops. And now we're making a longer spike stitch right here. And then we're going to make a shorter spike stitch right here, so we're ending with that shorter spike stitch, just like that. And we should be back around to the beginning where our single crochet is.

Okay, so basically you're just repeating single crochet, shorter spike stitch, longer spike stitch, shorter spike stitch, and then you repeat that over and over all the way around till you come to the very beginning and then you can slip stitch into the first stitch that you made and then we will just fasten that off with a very long tail 'cause we're gonna use that for sewing. Let's see. All right, so we'll pull that through. And hi, Sylwia, I've seen your name before and if I am butchering your name, please let me know. I don't know if you could put like a little phonetic spelling in there because I always am worried that I'm pronouncing people's names incorrectly and I wish there was a way for you to be like, "Hey, that's not right." And then we have a question.

It says, "Will this be available for reference for future use?" Yes, you can come back and find this again later and you can download the pattern again later and you will be able to watch the same video tutorial later, so yes. All right, so we've finished that and we're gonna just set that aside for a minute, then we're gonna talk about this. So this is exactly the same pattern for the most part, most of the same rounds as this. You can see they look pretty much the same except we did not change color. We just started with this color.

There's no, you know, you don't have to pull up a new loop of color here. You just continue working your way through here and then you are not going to be changing to yellow and you're not going to be doing these spike stitches, okay? So other than that, it's exactly the same. So you're gonna slide this into the back of, you know, the outer pencil tip and then we're gonna just stitch 'em together. So there are not the same amount of stitches between the inside and the outside because I wanted it to be able to fit on the inside.

So when you're doing your whip stitches, 'cause that's how we sew them together, we're just gonna go underneath the loops of the row in front and underneath the loops of the row in back and we're just gonna do a whip stitch. You do not need to line up this stitch with this stitch, okay? So you're just gonna hold them together, and honestly, I did not even need to pin this, but if you're a little newer to hanging onto things or to sewing in general, I would give it just a couple of pins just so that you know that it's going to match up okay. And when you do your whip stitches, you can completely just disregard what stitch it's coming through in the back as long as you are going through both layers, okay? You don't have to care exactly where your needle goes through.

You know, it's best if you can go through every single stitch on the outside and then you can just, wherever it lands, wherever it goes through the inside is completely fine. Okay, so we're just doing, let's see, let me just double check and make sure I didn't say a certain amount of stitches, let's see. Yep, okay. So we're just gonna whip stitch these two together and then we're gonna set this aside for later and then we will, but you don't wanna weave in your end or trim it off at all because we can use this same end. That's why I cut it so extra super long, practically hitting my laptop over here, because you can still continue to use this to stitch the pencil tip onto the striped part of the pencil later.

We'll just get this stitched around here and then we will set it aside. And you don't need to worry too much about it being exactly, you know, your colors are gonna blend together. You know, you're just using yellow on yellow and you're not gonna be able to see your stitches really. Especially when you put that striped section right up next to it, as long as it is sturdy, you know, as long as you have enough pieces connecting, then you should be fine. It doesn't have to be like, you know, you don't have to be super careful about it.

All right, we're almost there. Let's see and the next section we're gonna work on is the striped part of the pencil. And when I was first making this, I made it all out of lighter yellow and then I just felt like it needed a little more something, needed a little more pizzazz. So I added those extra contrasting darker kind of gold stripes in there with my sister's help because she's a math genius and she helped me figure out, it wasn't a big complicated math formula or anything, but she just sees things sometimes that I don't. She was looking at it and she thought, well, you know, you could have a stripe that matches up with each little section in here where it kind of dips up, so I was thankful for her help.

Thanks, Lisa. All right, so I'm just gonna kinda, it doesn't actually matter where your yarn comes out, I just kind of moved it over a little bit just to kind of tuck my end in a little bit there. You don't really need to do that 'cause once we get to the striped section, we'll just be sewing that to this and you won't even see that little bump. All right, so here we have a nice little sturdy cone. We're gonna set that aside and then we're gonna talk about the striped section.

So in the striped section, I wanted it to be easy to make your color changes and I do not wanna weave in a whole bunch of ends 'cause that is not my favorite thing to do, so I made it so that you can just carry the stripes along the edge and then you crochet over them later so you don't have to weave all that business in, which that would've been enough for me to not finish this project probably, to be honest. Okay, so when you're working on, let me just show you where we're going here. This is what we're gonna be making in the striped section. So we're gonna start here and then work back and forth in turned rows and then we work one row of the lighter yellow across the top and we're encasing all of our little floats that go from, you know, connecting the colors basically. I'll get to that in a second.

And then we go back and forth in turned rows in this direction to add that silvery part onto it. So we start by chaining 21. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21. And the last chain we made, that counts as only a turning chain, it's not a stitch. And so we just work into the second chain from the hook.

And I really like working into the bottom of my chain, which is the section with these little horizontal bumps on them, the little dashes, instead of underneath this V 'cause I just find it easier and it makes a really nice edge. And you will see this edge because it ends up being right here, right there. So it's nice if you have that, you know, tidy V shaped thing along the edge there next to your zipper. All right, so we're gonna start by working into the bottom bump or the bottom of the chain, so we're gonna insert our hook underneath the second one from the hook, yarn over, pull up a loop, and yarn over and pull through two. Okay, that's our single crochet.

So we do that all the way across the row. You can see it just makes a nice little edge there. And we will end up here with one single crochet in each stitch across. This is what it looks like. And then at this point, and I have finished off that last stitch, sometimes, actually most often, when people tell you to switch to a new color in stripes, they have you change on the very last yarn over, which is completely fine.

If you're used to doing that and you like doing it that way, you know, then go ahead and do it on the last yarn over of your last stitch of the old color. But the way I like to do it, I like to finish that stitch and then I like to yarn over with the new color like this. And then I just pull on the old color until that last loop just shrinks down to nothingness. See, it just kind of disappears. For some reason, it's just easier for me to make it look nice this way.

So then we chain one and we turn our work and that chain does not count as a stitch, so we are working in the very first single crochet of the row, okay? And we're single crocheting all the way across in this new color. And we're not gonna cut that lighter yellow color, we're just gonna let it hang out there on the edge, all right? So we will crochet all the way across and then we'll chain one and turn and this is what it'll look like when we're almost to the end of the row. I'll just finish it up here.

All right, so we've worked that first row, which I just showed you how to do all the way across, and then we did a chain one and then now we're working across back to where we started because we have to keep ending each colored section on the same sides so that we have floats that go up and we don't have to cut our yarn, all right? 'Cause we don't wanna spend all our time weaving in those ends. That is not the fun part of crochet to me. I mean, maybe there's somebody out there who's like, "No, I love weaving in ends," but I've never met that person. Okay, so when you get to the very end, I finish that stitch and we're gonna change back to the lighter color.

So here we have it all handy dandy 'cause we left it here and we just bring it up and I like to drop the old color and leave it behind and bring the new color up in front, okay? Not in front of your hook, but in front of this color here. So you just bring it up and yarn over, pull through. And you don't wanna pull this so tight, it has to be long enough to reach from down there to up here. Don't worry 'cause we're gonna crochet over that later.

It doesn't matter if it's a long loop, it's okay. And then I, once again, will pull on that last loop of the old color and tighten it down and then I'll chain one and turn, okay? And then work back in the opposite direction like this. Okay so I'm gonna work all the way back and turn and come all the way back to the beginning. And instead of changing to that color, I work the lighter colors a total of four rows.

So, you know, I start here one and two and three and four and then I change to the gold and the gold I only do one and two and that's it and then I change back to the light 'cause you can see, the lighter color is twice as wide as the darker color so that is the pattern there and you will just keep going back and forth and back and forth and you will end up with all these floats along one edge. And until your piece looks like this, let's see, here's where we ended. So you should have a total of nine stripes. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine of the gold stripes. And then you end with two rows of the lighter yellow.

And here we are back at the place where all the floats are. You can see now all these floats kind of along this edge, just reaching from one stripe to the next, and this is the part where we cover them up. So in order to crochet across this edge, I have divided my piece into four equal sections. One, two, three, four. And then I've broken down in the pattern, let's see.

We're on the setup row, 12 in the first, 11 in the second, 12 in the third, and 11 in the fourth. Okay so in order to put these equidistant, you don't have to measure, you don't have to count your rows. You can just fold it like this and put one there and then fold it like this and put one in the corner there. Same thing over here. You just fold it like that and put one there.

It does not need to be, you know, you don't need to calculate it, you don't need to to be super careful there. Just need a pretty good estimation. All right, so now we're just gonna be working into our row ends and we're doing 12 single crochets in this section here, so one, two, and we're just working wherever it looks like we need to. Like, if you get a really long stitch, maybe you made it too far away. But these will help you make sure your stitches are fairly even.

If you're having trouble getting the 12 in here, you could divide that further and you could do six here and six there and that might help. So we have one, two, three. And as you can see, I am working around these extra floats. You're just gonna encase that and I'm actually encasing this extra yarn tail too 'cause I don't feel like weaving that in either. So we have one, two, three, four, five, six.

And look for the spaces that are a little harder to get your hook in so that you don't end up with big holes. All right, see that's a good checkpoint. After you do six, you should be about halfway to your next marker. And then we'll do six more. One, two, three, four, five, and six.

All right, so we have a total of 12 right here and we are gonna continue doing that same thing, only you're gonna have 11 stitches here, 12 stitches here, and 11 stitches here. Okay so you're gonna work all the way across and then you will change color like you were changing colors here. It's exactly the same way. Only this time you're gonna change to your gray. And then you're going to, because we've just worked this skinny little yellow row right here, and then we are going to work back and forth in turned rows.

We're just making six rows of the gray right here, back and forth like that. And the reason you might be wondering, "Why don't we just work gray right now? That doesn't make any sense." I found that it looked a little bit better if we did one row of the yellow first because these stitches tend to be, if you look closely, they're a little uneven. You know, they don't look quite as perfect as when you're just working back and forth in stitches that are, you know, when you're not working into your row ends. When you work into your row ends, it can be a little bit wobbly like that and so I wanted to use a color that's gonna blend in better with the color here.

And then once we get that set up, then we can work back and forth in the gray and it looks very neat and tidy. So we will end up with a piece that looks just like this and then we can set that aside. So the next thing we're gonna work on is the eraser. So this section begins in a very similar way to the tip of our pencil, okay? Except that like I had mentioned earlier, in order to make a flat circle, you'll make six single crochets increasing in each round.

So what that means is if you start with six in the middle, just like we did on the tip, the next round is going to have twice that many 'cause you're adding six for each round. And if you're like, "Brenda, I can't, that's just, ugh. I don't wanna math right now." That's okay 'cause you don't have to do that. It tells you in the pattern exactly, you know, what you're supposed to be doing, where your increases are, what your stitch count is, it's all fine. I just wanted to, you know, give you the kind of overview.

It should be flat because you are increasing by six stitches on each round. And also if you need a little extra help with a flat circle for single crochet, there is at least one video on the Creative Crochet Corner website that shows you exactly how to do that. So you will end up with a circle that looks just like this and this is called the eraser inner structure. That's this section right here, okay? And I've already woven in my ends.

You can do that after you finish it if you want to or you can weave 'em in later, it doesn't matter. Then you're gonna repeat this exact same thing until you get another circle like that, but then you're not going to fasten off. So then, just place this on my hook, in order to make the eraser stiffer, I place these two together and, you know, it doesn't matter if you put them, you know, facing the same way or facing opposite. I felt like maybe it gives you a little tiny bit of extra structure if they're opposing curves 'cause, you know, because of the way that you stitch, see how the edges wanna curl up a little? I mean, they are big enough to be flat, but they just have a natural tendency to do that until you block it.

I thought maybe if we put them opposing together that it would make a difference. I don't know if it really does, I wouldn't sweat it. If you start attaching it where they're both facing you, the right side's facing you, it'll be just fine. But if you need someone to decide for you, 'cause sometimes our deciders get broken, then I will decide for you, put them together like this. All right, so then you're going to just make a round of single crochet just like you normally would, except this time, you're going through both layers.

And it does not matter which stitch you start in, totally doesn't matter. You can just put it anywhere on the backside and you're gonna insert through the front, which has the yarn attached to it, and then you're gonna insert through a stitch of the back, just like that, okay? And then you're gonna yarn over, pull up a loop, yarn over, pull through two. We're gonna mark that stitch 'cause that's the beginning of our round. And then we are going to work on the next stitch.

So we're gonna slide our hook through the next stitch and the one behind, pull up a loop, yarn over, pull through two. Okay so basically, we're sewing these together, but we're using single crochet to do that, okay? We're just going through both thicknesses and they should match up 'cause they have the same amount of stitches. So it's best if, you know, you won't even have to pin it if you pay attention to what stitch you're going into and you don't skip any stitches. So we're going to finish crocheting these together and then it becomes a very sturdy piece.

Here, I'll get a little further around and then I'll show you. It's kind of surprising actually how one piece, you know, it's a little bit stiff because I am crocheting a little more tightly than I normally would if I were making a garment or even like a pillow cover or something like that. You know, I wanted this to have structure. This is more like making amigurumi where you do need to crochet fairly tightly so that you have that extra structure. You know, especially on the ends where the eraser and the tip, that kind of helps shape the pencil bag itself so it's good to have that extra, you know, firm gauge when you're working on these kind of of projects.

All right, few more stitches and then I'll show you how much stiffer this got. It is actually kind of surprising. See this piece, it's quite stiff. Like, if I hold it this way and wiggle it back and forth, it is not a floppy piece anymore, it's quite sturdy. All right, so you'll continue all the way around to your marker and then you're just gonna work single crochet into the stitches you just made.

You're gonna work around and around, let's see, how many rounds? Six rounds, yep, six rounds of single crochet. After you do this joining round where you join the two layers together, you do six rounds of the single crochet. And then you'll pull up a loop of the silver or the gray. I pulled it up right here.

You just insert your hook into the first stitch, pull up a loop of the new color, and then you make one round of slip stitches, okay? A slip stitch, let me just show you. So this is gonna be a little weird because this is not where you're supposed to put it. We're supposed to do six more rounds, but I just wanna make sure that you know what I'm talking about when I just say a regular slip stitch. So you're just gonna insert your hook, pull up the gray, insert to the next stitch, pull up the gray, and pull it through, okay?

All this does is it makes a decorative little border or little line along your work and just to clarify, you don't do it here at this part in the project. You will do it right here, okay? After you've done your six rounds of single crochet. And then after the six rounds of single crochet and then one round of slip stitches, then you're going to make these single crochet that are back behind your slip stitches. You can kind of see if I pull, they're worked into the pink actually, they're not worked into your slip stitches.

Your slip stitches are just like a little decorative line and then we work a round of single crochet directly behind that so that's what I'm doing here. So what that means is you just have to kind of dig in here with your crochet hook to put it underneath where you normally would on that pink round. You know, you're just pushing the gray to the front out of the way, okay? Yarn over, pull up a loop, yarn over, pull through two. So the reason I did that slip stitch round and then I'm working this behind, I do this often on my amigurumi projects because sometimes you want it to look like there's one color sitting on top of another color.

Like, if you were making a bear and he had pants on, you know, maybe the bear would be this pink part and then his pants would start with a little round of slip stitches and then you could change color. So that way it doesn't look like his body just changed color. It looks like there's actually a layer sitting on top of the other layer. And I wanted it to look like that for, you know, 'cause I wanted it to look like the metal that's sort of clamping the eraser in place. Okay, so here we have finished our one round of those single crochet and then we can just fasten off.

We'll cut our yarn here, leave a pretty long yarn tail like that. And you might also be wondering like, "Why did you stop there? Why didn't you keep going with the silver? Why did you do silver at all, that makes no sense." The reason that I did that was because when I sew this pencil pouch together, I wanted to be able to stitch, you know, whatever I'm sewing it with, I didn't want it to show in the other colors. So I switched to the silver so when I whip stitch these together, all my seaming just blends right in.

Okay so this is the exciting part in my opinion. I mean, this is all fun, but watching it come together at the end is pretty darn fun. All right, so let's see, where's my needle? Let me see what order I tell you to put this together in. Okay, okay, so we start with the eraser.

So with this, you can use either side as the right side. To me, the side that we did that first row of the yellow on, that just looks better to me. It looks a little more neat and tidy than this side. So just take a look at your two pieces, determine what the right side of your piece is, okay, and just keep that in mind. And then we are going to sew the eraser to the silver part all the way around.

So in order to have enough space for this zipper and this little edging that we're gonna make here to make that look really nice, we are actually leaving a gap. And maybe it's not very clear on this finished project because I already have a little border of the silver going around here. But you might be thinking, "That's very strange. Why do we have a gap between those two pieces?" And that's to make sure that we have enough room for the zipper to fit. So we're gonna pick two stitches somewhere.

I'm gonna pick 'em opposite of where this is just because there's a little bit of unevenness here where we changed colors and began our round and I want that to be on the bottom of the bag. Not a really big deal, but about halfway across that, I'm going to attach that right here to the edge of the silver on the striped section. Okay, I'm just waving my pin in and out here to get it in the right spot. And actually, we're gonna put one this direction too, 'cause that's gonna hold it a little better. I'm gonna weave it in and out from one piece to the other, kind of like we're sewing with a pin.

Which, you know, when I first learned how to sew, I didn't really understand that sewing with the pin basically holds it so much more secure, when you go in and out. You're kind of making a sewing motion instead of just like using the pin to stab your pieces together. All right, so we're gonna leave a gap of two stitches, one, two, and then we'll pin this together right here, pin those two edges together and then the rest of this should all fit. All right and so this should be a one-to-one ratio of your stitches to each other. What I mean by that is one stitch from the eraser to one stitch here.

But you don't have to worry so much about that if you don't want to. If you wanna just pin them together and then whip stitch them together where they are pinned, that's fine. You don't really need to worry so much about that. It'll turn out just fine without being so particular. All right, so I'm starting here 'cause that's where my yarn tail is and I'm just gonna do a whip stitch connecting those two layers together, here we go.

And I'm going underneath two loops of each edge, I should say. Basically, I'm inserting my needle underneath the V of each edge to make it a nice and sturdy seam here. So when I was first designing this pencil pouch, I designed it in a different way, but that's because I didn't have the stripes in. And then when I realized I needed the stripes, I realized I wanted to switch the direction that I stitched that part in because I did not wanna have to change color. I didn't wanna work it this way and have to change.

That just seemed like way too much work. So sometimes when you're working on a project, you know, especially if you're trying something new, don't be afraid to experiment and try working in a totally different direction. That's one of the things that I really love about crochet is that it's super easy to switch directions. You know, like I was working back and forth and horizontally on these stripes, and then I started working back and forth along the edge there. It's just really easy to just turn your work and start working it in a different way.

I think that's part of the reason that designing for crochet just seems to come so much more naturally to me than knitting. I also design for knitting too, and I love knitting, but I have to use my brain a little more to think about how to connect things sometimes. All right, so you can see, there is this little gap here and that's gonna be filled in. We're gonna stitch around here, and then there needs to be a little space there for the zipper. So that is normal to have that little section where there's nothing to stitch the eraser part.

So that's another reason actually why this gray is attached to the eraser end. All right, get a little further and maybe I won't complete this section 'cause you guys can imagine. You can just imagine me doing this for five more minutes, right? You don't need to see it. All right, here we go.

We're getting pretty close, but we'll call that good. So you would just continue all the way around to, you know, where you started. So I'm just gonna let that hang 'cause I think you guys get the picture for that part and then we are going to stitch the tip of the pencil onto this end. All right, so same thing. You do want a little bit of a gap and like I was saying before, this is designed so that the darker gold section should match up with where this dips up or where your single crochet stitches are, so we're just going to kind of set those together.

Actually, there's a little jog from where you change color and I wanna put that on the bottom of my bag so maybe I'll move that to here. This section right here, we'll put it here. So this darker gold is gonna be pointing to that single crochet right there and there is a note about that in the directions. All right, so we're just gonna do a whip stitch like this to connect those two together. And it might be best to pin this whole thing first.

Let me just do that first. Even though you know that your gold are going to be pointing to that single crochet, even though you know that that's gonna happen, I think it's best to just get the whole thing pinned and then you won't have any nasty surprises later, right? All right, so we have to make sure we have a little gap here 'cause that's where our zipper's gonna go. And we're pinning the gold stripe to that single crochet part of the tip. It's too bad my pins have yellow heads on them.

I didn't think about changing my pins for this project so you guys could actually see these, but hopefully you can at least see where I'm matching the pieces up. And I do recommend if you don't have quilter pins, that you use quilter pins or something with a very large head on it because when you're pinning crochet together, ugh, your pins, if you're using regular small like dress maker pins, the heads of your pins will just disappear into your fabric and you will not know where they are. Okay so that's all pinned where we want it to be and we're just gonna whip stitch through both layers. Whoops, I got caught on my pin. And you know, because we're using the lighter yellow to stitch into the gold, you will see a little fleck of a stitch.

I mean, you can't just make that completely disappear, but you can pull your stitches fairly tight here on this point and that'll help them disappear just a little bit more into the fabric, okay? All right and we've made it to, whoops. This section so we're just going to kind of skip over here. I'll just slide my needle over and then we'll continue with our whip stitches here. Just working underneath the V basically from the top layer, the outer layer of the pencil point and through just a little bit of that fabric there to attach these to each other.

One of the things that I'm always interested in when I'm working on a project is how to avoid doing a lot of sewing. Because even though I love sewing, that's actually, you know, one of my other craft hobbies. It used to be my job for many years, but even though I love sewing, I know that there's a lot of people who just like to crochet and they don't like to do a bunch of fiddly sewing at the end. So, you know, I normally try to avoid doing this much sewing in a project, but in this case, the sewing really won out because it made the construction of all the pieces make a lot more sense and made it a lot easier to put this together. So this time, the sewing won, but maybe next time it won't.

All right, so let's talk about the zipper. Now, oh, well, I should mention I didn't stitch all the way around and you should, of course, but in the interest of time, we're just gonna skip that part 'cause I'm sure you can imagine it. Okay, so let's talk about the zipper again. I had a zipper that was too long and I shortened it by using some thread and just making a tack here where I went around and around and round and round and round and round and around, many, many times till you make a thick enough kind of blob of thread and then we're just gonna cut a little bit below, I'll give it about an inch. And if you have a lighter, you can melt the edge of your tape, there we go.

Most zipper tape is a synthetic that will melt and it will not fray then after you do that. But be careful 'cause there are some zipper tapes that are actually cotton and I don't want anyone to burn their eyebrows off, so test it a little bit first. Just be aware of that. You know, you might have to blow it out. But almost all the zippers I've ever shortened have been a synthetic that just melt.

I just wanted to put that little disclaimer in there. Okay, so you're gonna figure out how long your zipper is. If you need to make a little tack here, you can. It should just fit right in here and you can decide which way you want your zipper to go. It doesn't make a difference.

Well, it doesn't make a difference to me, but maybe it'll make a difference to you. So you can imagine yourself opening the piece and what side you'd like it to be on. So I'm just gonna pin both ends of the zipper in place. And when you do this, you wanna make sure that you are giving yourself enough space between the zipper teeth and the edge of your, ooh, I just realized I forgot one little step here. This is kind of an extra bonus part.

You don't have to do this part, but I wanted to make the edges of this part of the project look a little tidier because these are my ends of rows so it was kind of bumpy. So what I did here was I just pulled up a loop of my gray and then I chained one, and then I worked some single crochet stitches. I think I did six, six to the end and then six back the other way around that U shape. But you can just do as many as you need to to get across without puckering or making the edge wavy. When you get to the two stitches down here, you're just gonna work right into those two stitches, one and two, and then you're gonna work across the other side.

Okay, so we're just making a little U-shaped border of single crochet and really it's just to make the edge just look a little bit more polished. Just like that and then we can fasten off here. I almost forgot that part. Okay, so after you've fastened off, you can weave in your ends. Let's see, I'll try to tuck 'em in really quickly so we can get back to the zipper sewing.

And here we go. All right, this isn't gonna be the most thorough weaving ends job, but I can go back in and weave them in a little bit more thoroughly. I just wanna get them out of the way from where the zipper is. We'll just slide 'em through here like that. Okay, so back to the zipper.

So you're just gonna pin both ends in, and you wanna make sure your zipper tape isn't getting wavy, 'cause that means your zipper tape is too long. Or if it's pulling on your work, then it's too short, okay? And, like I was saying before, you just need to make sure the edge of your crochet is far enough from the zipper teeth that it's not gonna get caught in it. All right, that's a little too short. Let's try this, that's better.

So you can pin your zipper in to both sides. I would recommend doing both sides and then stitching one side at a time. And if it becomes too awkward to get the pins in there, like usually, I'll just try to sort of stab one in here in the middle and then once I have the middle set, I can unzip it like that and then you can put your hand behind it to get it pinned in. Otherwise, if that's too awkward to just sort of stab in the air to get the middle of that zipper in the right place, you can certainly just pin it and then zip it closed and look at it and see how you did and then adjust from there, that works too. All right, so this is all pinned in place.

And then to sew it, all you need to do is, well, I usually do two lines of stitching when I'm sewing my zipper. Let's see, I'm gonna see if I can flip this inside out so you guys can see a little better. You don't have to do this when you're sewing it. You can just kind of open it up and see, but I was worried my hands would be too much in the way. You wouldn't be able to see what I was doing so here we go.

I think this is gonna work. Okay, so I start out, actually, we'll start on the outside and get the edge stitched and then we'll whip stitch the edge of the zipper on the second pass. So I'm just gonna show you a little sample of how I normally stitch a zipper. So I have a knot tied in the end of my thread and I have a double strand of thread so that means it's run through my needle all the way back to the knot and then the ends are tied together. So I like to do a back stitch here.

I'm just gonna pull that out since I'm holding it with my finger. So that means I start one stitch to the back and I come out two stitches to the front, okay? So I go back, now here's where my thread is coming out. Right there, right here. So I put my needle in behind it and come out in front of it.

So where my thread had come out before, that's in the center of where I went in and where I came out. And I just do this all the way along the edge, oops. When you're doing this, you won't have a million pins under here because you will have stitched your pieces together already so that'll be a little easier for you. So I am just stitching directly below this little V on the top edge of the fabric right here, doing a little back stitch along that, just below that V. Okay and I'll show you what the inside looks like.

I'm gonna push this through to the inside. You wouldn't push this through to the inside until you were all done. But just imagine, you can stitch all the way across here. If you want to, you can change threads for the gray, but I didn't on this project and I think it turned out fine. You can really barely see it 'cause it gets hidden pretty well inside the yarn.

So then after you've stitched that back stitch, if you wanna make it extra sturdy, here, I'm just gonna run my needle down here. You will do a little whip stitch, a very small whip stitch to catch the edge of your zipper right here and that just holds it in place a little better. There's gonna be lots of tugging, you know, especially if you are going to be giving this to a kid who's gonna use it for school, they're not gonna very gently slide the zipper every time. They're just gonna unzip it, you know? They're not going to be taking the time, so you need to just make sure that it's extra sturdy.

So you would do, you know, your back stitching all the way around the whole thing and then you could come to the inside and do a little whip stitch along the edge just to hold it and make it a little bit more sturdy. All right, and that concludes the pencil pouch, all right? So I am so glad that you guys could join me for this project, it was super fun. It's kind of a silly project, but to be honest, I'm gonna be using one of these for my crochet stuff. So maybe even some fun-loving adults are gonna like these too, not just for the kids.

So thank you very much for joining me and I hope to see you at my next live, thank you.