My pen hobby has a new hobby!

I came home from work yesterday afternoon with a bee in my bonnet and the burning urge to sit down and sew something. I've done a lot of quilting in the past, but with work, running, and Life™in general consuming much of my time and attention of late, this hobby had very much gone into stasis. It was really nice therefore to feel energised about a new project, so for the first time in months I switched on my sewing machine, with an apology for my neglect, and two hours later had my first completed prototype pen wrap!

For the first playaround try I just worked from a handy piece of fabric that seemed about the right length, and did some testing with pens to determine how much space to allow each pen across the width. The end result is a little shorter than I'd prefer, suiting pens more like the M400 or Pilot Prera than my M805s or Conid, but as a proof of concept piece it turned out great and established a set of baselines measurements from which I set about creating the second prototype.

For number two I used some beautiful Alexander Henry material, Zen Tattoo, featuring stylised Japanese designs against a black background. I'd snagged the last few metres in all three colourways a few years ago when it was discontinued and going out of stock, and have been wanting the right project to show off the amazing illustrations. Turns out that a pen wrap is the perfect size to capture two or three icons, and the material gives lots of different images to choose from as the main feature.

I cut the fabric to capture the Samurai warrior on the large back panel, and both the tiger and the fighting dragon & eagle on the inside pouch panel. Cutting for specific areas unfortunately incurs wastage in the unused areas around the selected images, but I was able to salvage a good long strip to use for the tie. For the lining I used a soft satin suede material that was probably intended for use in a garment rather than a pen case. The slippery satin back of the suede fabric proved tricksy to manage and required extra pinning, and this combined with the added time to cut and sew specific panels added up to double the completion time of the first wrap. It was worth the extra care though as it turned out great for only my second try.

Tomorrow I'll try making a 3-pen sleeve and another wrap or two!