As I have picked up some speed in my crocheting, I have found myself increasingly going through the painful process of identifying crochet hooks from their jumble in a one compartment pencil case. I either had to dump them out, or I felt I ended up looking at the same ones over and over while I searched for the correct size. Thus, I decided to sew a simple crochet hook case, which is not only convenient around the house, but super handy when I travel. (click on any photo to enlarge)
The short description is that it is a row of long, narrow pockets sewn onto some fabric that can be rolled up compactly. The longer description involves how I made pockets without any raw edges anywhere to get tangles in the crochet hooks. That is, each piece of fabric was lined with a light weight cotton.
First, I estimated how tall and long the case should be. I am glad to say I planned for a few more and some larger hooks, because I was able to add those to my stash recently. There was one super big rug hook, but I worked around it without issue. For the outer shell, I used a scrap of home decorating fabric left over from making aprons. It is about the weight of a mid-weight denim, but in a pretty floral design. I cut this rectangle to the dimensions of 18.5 inches by 7.75 inches, this allowing for ¼ inch seams. These are not magic numbers, but are the smallest I would recommend making a crochet hook case.
I cut a piece of lining fabric using that first rectangle as a pattern (that is the blue fabric in my photos). I pinned and sewed these right sides together, leaving about 4 inches free so I could turn it all right sides out. After sewing,
- I clipped off the corners, not too close to the seam,
- turned it all right side out,
- poked the corners out,
- then pressed it flat making sure to also press the open seam edges to match the rest of the edges. This would make it easier to edge stitch around the whole things.
- Then, I did edge stitch about ⅛ inch from the edge of the whole piece
The next piece I wanted to make was the long section that I would partition into pockets simply by sewing vertically up it once the main edges were sewn to the outer shell. I made this long pocket from two pieces of the lighter cotton fabric, wanting to avoid too much bulk in my crochet hook case. The dimensions for this pocket were about 4 inches by 17.5 inches. I wanted it to fit nearly to the edges of the main shell, but not have to sew it against the already thick seam of the outer edge. I lined it following the same process as for the first piece. Once it was edge stitched, I pinned it in place over what would be the bottom of my crochet hook case and sewing ONLY the two side edges and the bottom edges, reinforcing the top corners with some tacking (zig-zag the machine stitch in one location).
Now it was time to decide how big to make each of the vertical pockets. I knew I would need some ease for each hook to slide in and out, but not so much that it flopped around. But I didn’t measure anything. I “eyeballed” it. As it turns out, my first pockets, for the crochet hooks used for thread crochet began at close to a scant ½ inch wide. Each pocket slightly increased from there, with the width being about ¾ inch by the time I reached the pocket for the J hook, and nearly 1.25 inches for the big, fat hooks.
It seemed useful to also have a place for my small scissors and the tapestry needle I keep on hand for threading in the loosed yarn ends. For these, I went with leaving the last section of the long pocket as a square.
With all the crochet hooks in the case, I rolled it up and lightly marked with pencil where to attach some ribbon for tying it closed. Obviously I needed one ribbon at the very end, but the other one needed to be wherever the roll touched that end when it was closed. I decided to cut a piece of strand of 1.5 inch ribbon I had to a length of 40 inches, then trimmed the ends diagonally. About 16.5 inches from one end, I sewed the ribbon to the edge of the case across the width of the ribbon. Four inches along the out shell of the case was where I need to secure the ribbon again to hold it in place for tying nicely.
After using the crochet hook case this way for a few weeks, I discovered that some of the hooks could unexpectedly slip out if I turned it sideways too much or upside down. I temporarily solved this problem by keeping it in a recycled ziplock bag when I was traveling with it. This worked well, but my long term solution was to make flaps to fit across the top of the pockets.
Again, these flaps were made just like the other pieces, so that no seam allowances or raw edges remained exposed. I would have used the same blue fabric, but I couldn’t find it! So, I opted for a blue and white checked lined long flap, then made the flap for the scissor pocket completely out of that fabric.
It turned out that space constraints made it best for me to deal with sewing the flap right along the thick top edge of the outer shell. I made sure I had a heavy duty needle in my sewing machine. I used clips, instead of pins, to hold it all in place. I back stitched on both ends with quite a bit of patience to make sure it would hold up to stress there as I put crochet hooks in and out.
The smaller scissor pocket flap was sewn lower down, and the stitching ended up being on the ribbon tie, but it is straight and does not look out of place.
Now, it is all ready for my next trip, whether it just be to sit and wait for the car to be serviced or riding along with my husband “to town” half an hour away. I know I can grab that case and have every hook I need, and my scissors. I will not need to waste any time inefficiently searching for the correct hook. This crochet hook case is prettier than anything I have seen for sale. Not to mention it was basically free, because it is all made out of scraps.
Please let me know if you have any questions!