"Now when we go out for lunch today, I want you to be good in the restaurant..."

...as if that ever happens for more than 5 minutes. However, with this nifty little roll-up car case I made for Tyler, he is happy to play quietly for at least 8 minutes.

I used a modified version of the long thread's kids drawing case pattern, available on Ellen's blog. I don't think I modified it enough to pass it off as my own(!), so I won't be making any for sale.

What I can do though is tell you how I made this one. Instead of making the case 13 x 10 in, I cut it to be around 20 x 12 in. The chequerboard pocket piece was half the height when folded, ie: about 6 inches.

Each car slot is about 3 inches wide and the case fits 6 matchbox cars in total. I made sure to position the velcro tab 3/4 of the way down the side of the case, so that I could fold the road part over the 'garages', then roll and velcro it, otherwise the cars would fall out.

For the road, I used two strips of 2 inch wide black cotton twill tape sewn as 'lanes' alongside eachother, although if I had an old seatbelt at hand I probably would have used that instead. I considered getting fancy with different shades of green ricrac 'grass' placed at the edges of the road but settled for a yellow line down the middle. In hindsight I probably would have used one length of black 'road' and made the other side look like train tracks somehow, seeing as how I realised Ty's die-cast Thomas trains can fit in the case too.