Drop Dead Cute: Kid's Activity Case

This is my little man's present for when he visits the hospital when baby arrives. Currently we're using one of my prototype diaper clutches to keep a small coloring book, crayons and stickers in. It works well and he knows I keep it in my purse so whenever he's in the mood whether at home, at a restaurant, in an airplane or car, etc., he pulls it out and has fun. I've been wanting to make something a little more functional for him and this is what I came up with. I've been making sketches for weeks, changing the design numerous times and then landed on this. I'm so happy with the way it turned out and I hope it works well for him.

It has a velcro closure and this is what it looks like when you first open it. On the right is a pocket for smaller booklets, wikki stix and flash cards. On the left is a bigger pocket that fits Step Into Reading books that I pick up at Target. I designed the pockets so in the event that sides of the case fall to the side of his lap things don't go falling out...hopefully. That's the idea anyway.

The mini sticker/coloring books I find at Target, as well as the flashcards. The Dover books (Little Construction Site) I find at local toy stores and stock up on them whenever I can.

This is what it looks like fully open. The middle section fits a notepad for coloring or the Kumon Workbooks. On the right is an empty watercolor case used to hold crayons. I put a lot of thought into this part. Initially I was going to sew little individual spaces for crayons like you would for crayon or pencil rolls but we end up with a million broken crayons and it just didn't seem practical. Then I thought about making a pocket to keep them in but my little guy likes to see all his crayon options at once and I know that would just end up with him taking them all out at the same time and that would end in a mess. So a see through case it was. It fits the larger triangular shaped crayons as well and eventually he could put pencils in there.

Next to the crayon case is a pocket for stickers and foam stickers. Again, I designed this so he could easily get into it but if it falls to the side of his lap that the pocket is facing up and things won't fall out.

Here you can see that I made a pocket for the notepad or Kumon Workbooks back flap to fit into to keep it from moving around.

I attached the crayon case with two kinds of velcro. The kind on the plastic case has serious adhesive not meant for sewing and the kind on the fabric is meant for sewing and has no adhesive.

Here it is without anything in it. As much as I love this Echino Car fabric, if you decide to make one of these I would advise not using a fabric with a pattern like this. Half the time I spent on this project was just trying to match everything up. Don't get me wrong I love how it turned out and I didn't mind at all because it's for my little guy but having a directional fabric with a very specific pattern made it more time consuming.

A few last specifics:

The Echino fabirc is mid-weight which works really well for this kind of project.

I inserted seperate pieces of extra thick template plastic in-between the fabric layers that form the three different panels to make the case more sturdy and less floppy. I topstitched between the panels so they stay in place and the case folds properly.

Folded, the finished measurements are approximately 7.25"x10.5"h

Fully opened, the finished measurements are approximately 21.5"x10.5"h

Don't think I'll be doing a tutorial on this guy. The amount of steps kinda makes my head dizzy. Maybe one day I'll write up a PDF pattern though. Hmmm. Always coming up with more projects for myself :)

Can't wait to give this to him. Any day now!