Pencil Cases and autumn photos

Hello again!!
I was chatting with the lovely Fat Lady Sews this week as she had offered to send me a copy of her pattern for making teenage sized peasant dresses. As I've bought absolutely loads some fabric in the sales recently I wanted to have another go at making a larger size dress and she said she'd refined her pattern so it was a more comfortable fit. (I'd tried making my own pattern back around Easter but I wasn't overly happy with it...) She also very kindly offered to send me some buttercup yellow fabric to make some toddler size dresses - they'll look so cute in yellow!
She mentioned she had been making some pencil cases for DAGUK as well, and I thought, I could do that. So I hunted out some zips I had bought for goodness knows what, and some leftover cut up denim jeans from bags I've made and produced these -

To be honest I could have done with longer zips - I had 8" ones - so my pencil cases may not be quite wide enough to get a brand new pencil in but they should be ok. 

I came across a good tutorial recently for making a zipped pouch without a seam across the bottom edge. A simple construction method once you know how - it simply hadn't occurred to me. Find it HERE. It doesn't show you how to do the really neat zip ends though - try THIS SITE for a truly neat finish - although I opted for a very quick zip install this time rather than fiddly and pretty. I think it probably took me about 20 minutes tops to sew each pencil case. All the fabric was leftovers and the zips were no more than 50p each. Bargain.

(While I'm sharing links to good tutorials, try THIS ONE if you want to make a pouch with a "flat bottom".)

I'm on holiday this week, so hope to get some more dresses made. And maybe another pencil case or two. I know I've got a handful of zips somewhere - just need to find them...

I also want to get out and see some autumn colour. I went to Hilliers today while the sun was shining and it was looking glorious, with lots more colour still to come.

Here's just a taste -

Well, that's all for now but I'm sure I'll pop by again before the week is out!