National Sewing Month 2013: Watermelon Pencil Case Tutorial from Creating My Way To Success

Hi – I’m Jill from Creating my way to Success and I’m thrilled to be here for National Sewing Month.

Today I want to show you how to make this very cute watermelon pencil case. My girls love pencil cases and it seems you can never have too many!

So here goes. You’ll need scraps of red, white and green fabric, a zip, some black buttons and some paper and pencil.

To make your pattern – simply draw a slice of watermelon. Don’t worry about getting it perfect – fruits are not all exactly the same size and shape! Here’s mine on an A4 sheet of paper:

You cut out this whole slice you have drawn and use it as the pattern to cut your inside fabric – two pieces. Remember for each piece you cut – cut a little wider than your pattern to allow for the seams:

To cut the pieces for the outside of the pencil case, cut along the lines of your pattern for the red, white and green parts to be separate. Then use these 3 pattern pieces to cut your colored pieces of fabric for the outside of your pencil case – again remembering to cut wider than your pattern piece to allow for seams. Cut two of each color.

Now you need to pin then sew each colored piece together in turn. Remember to pin the right sides of the fabric together – and use plenty of pins to keep the curves in line!

To add the seeds to your watermelon slice – simply stitch on some black buttons in random spaces. Remember to do this for both sides of the pencil case!

My zip was about 24cm (9″) long. You can use a longer or shorter one, and use scrap fabric to cover both ends to make it the same width as your watermelon slice. Here’s how:

Take rectangular scraps of whichever fabric you like – I chose my inner red fabric.  Place 2 pieces right sides together on either side of the zip, pinning where you want the zip to end. Stitch these pieces in place, and trim the very end of the zip off.

Repeat this with the other end of the zip – then trim the edges of the fabric in line with the zip.

Lay one side of your watermelon slice face up. Place your zip face down on top, then one of your inner fabric pieces right sides down on top of that. Pin them using your zipper foot stitch close to the zip teeth.

To prevent the fabric from catching in the zip, open out the fabrics and pull back from the zip. Top-stitch along the edge of the zip.

Now the other half of the watermelon slice. Place your other inner fabric piece face up. Then the part with the attached zip face up on top. Finally your other watermelon slice face down on the very top – face down. Pin and stitch with your zipper foot, and once again pull the fabric back from the zip and top-stitch the other side.

Now open out your pencil case with the zip in the middle. Make sure the zip is open. Then flip over fabrics so you have both inner fabrics on one side and both outer fabrics on the other side. Pin these pieces together around the curved edges. Leave a gap of a few inches on the inner fabric side. You’ll need this to turn the pencil case out.

Done! Congratulations, you’ve made a cute watermelon pencil case!

I hope you liked this tutorial. There are heaps more on my blog so please do come and visit me at

Creating my way to Success.

Happy National Sewing month to all!