How To Make a Simple Zipper Pouch | Beginner Sewing Tutorial

hi it's jan and welcome back to my channel in today's sewing tutorial i'm going to show you how to make these simple zipper pouches it's a beginner sewing project they are super fun to make and they only take a little bit of fabric putting a zipper in can seem intimidating and overwhelming but it's really easy once you put one zipper in you'll want to make a bunch of these up it's really that simple so pull out your sewing machine if you haven't gotten it out for a while and let's make some zipper pouches [Music] they're lined and they come in handy for so many things you can make them any size and put anything in them they make great cosmetic bags i use one this size to put my colored pencils in or my crochet hooks stay with me for the whole video because i'm going to show you some different options of ways that you can finish off the bottom of the pouch and at the end of the video i'll also have some bonus material where i'll show you some fun ways that how you can embellish the outside of your pouch and i'll show you a simplified method on how to put these zipper tabs in let's go over the items and things that you'll need of course you'll need your fabric and you can make these any size but for this particular one we're going to cut two of the outer fabric nine by seven and two lining pieces the same size you'll cut out for the zipper tab a piece of fabric that's three by two and that can be contrasting it can be the same color i love using a rotary cutter and a ruler and a mat you can use scissors if you want to you'll need a pair of fabric scissors a seam gauge a very sharp pencil and i love these wonder clips they are really handy a glue stick just a regular elmer's glue water soluble washable glue stick and get in your sewing machine supplies and find your zipper foot most machines will have those and using a zipper foot will really help make this a lot easier and if you want to embellish your pouch with a label or a tag have that available some pins a turning stick and a zipper that is at least one inch smaller than your the width of your zipper pouch and as you can see i'm using an upcycled zipper that i have unpicked from a project and obviously you don't need one this long but we'll i'll show you how to cut down a zipper that's too long if you want to add a little bit more structure and firmness to the bag you can apply this fusible fleece this is a low loft fusible fleece that you can iron on it works really well we'll be doing that with this bag you can and i have cut two the same size of the lining and the outer bag which is 9x7 you'll need your sewing machine and an iron the first thing that we're going to do is iron on our stabilizer to the outer part of the bag now this iron-on fleece will have a bumpy side to it and a smooth side to it the little glue particles that you're feeling there and that needs to be facing the bumpy side up and then we'll place the wrong side of our pieces onto the fleece and then just take your iron and give it a good press and it will adhere to the fabric it really is good stuff to use and we'll do that with both outer pieces you want to make sure that there isn't any of the fleece showing or the sticky stuff will get on your iron and it's hard to get off so make sure that that's a little bit smaller or at least to the edge and we'll set those aside grab that little piece of fabric you're going to use for the tab this is the three inch by two now we're going to cut it down to two pieces that are one and a half by two inches but i find this saves you a step first fold that long edge in half and press and then fold it in half bringing the raw edge to that fold that pressing halfway point and bring the other edge to the halfway point and then fold it in half again i'm just going to fold it in half and cut down when you have your two tabs okay now let's get our zipper ready so as you can see i love to recycle and upcycle things this is my bin of zippers i have a tutorial showing you how to disassemble clothing to recycle the zippers and you can find that in on my channel there's a lot of good ideas on there but i have chosen a zipper that is i like the color of it for this project but it's really long so i'm going to i'm just going to use a portion of it and i'll use the rest of it for some really fun projects that i'll be showing you these are cut off zippers that i'm going to make into some really fun projects so stay tuned for that but your zipper needs to be one inch shorter than the width of your bag so this is nine inches so i'm going to cut this zipper eight inches so let's say we were using this zipper this one has plastic teeth and this one has metal teeth so you want to be careful when you're cutting and when you are sewing a metal zipper just so that when you cut it out so when i cut the zipper i'm not going to actually cut this but you can see how the teeth are kind of staggered so you can't really get a straight cut without hitting one of those metal teeth so you'll cut to the place between those teeth and then you kind of jog over and cut so that you're not actually cutting or you'll ruin your scissors you'll get a pretty straight cup but we're going to cut this zipper down this is a plastic zipper so it cuts through pretty easily now you don't want this to spread open otherwise you'll disengage your zipper so i'm going to measure eight inches you don't want it to be any bigger than eight inches so if any maybe just a little bit smaller but we're going to try to get that eight inches there and then i'm going to take a piece of just a small piece of tape and apply it maybe a quarter inch just to keep that together until we are ready to sew it i'm just going to trim off that tape now we're ready to apply our zipper tabs so all we're going to do is scoot that end of the zipper down to the fold and fold that over the top grab some clips and just clip that in place while we get ready to sew it and you'll want to make sure that the end the folds are lined up if one is higher than the other when you stitch it it may not catch on both sides so be aware of that just center it and then we'll take it to the sewing machine and stitch just an eighth of an inch in all the way across here i'm going to put my zipper foot on right now and we'll be using it for most of the project this is what my zipper foot looks like some machines might have a little bit different look to a zipper foot you can either install that onto the left or switch it over to the right depending on which side of the zipper you're sewing i'm putting it on the left side some machines are a little bit different you may need to move your needle position either to the left or to the right on my machine here it's set for the perfect setting just on the center because i've i've offset it already by putting it on the left and or the right so my needle is good to go but make sure that that when you put your presser your zipper foot on that when the needle comes down it's not going to hit it so when we're applying it to the zipper i can put my presser foot down the edge of my zipper foot is right along the edge of the zipper and it allows you to get really close to the zipper without having a wide presser foot that's going to get all ski wampus and so kind of crooked when you're having to sew over the the neat the teeth of the zipper so my needle comes down it's going to give me that proper seam allowance and it has the edge where i can just follow it now depending on your project you may need to bring it over or adjust that so i hope that makes sense so put on your zipper foot and we can still use it to sew this portion of the tabs so i'm going to remove my clips make sure my teeth are the teeth of the zipper are together and even i'm using a just a universal needle and i'm going to just sew an eighth of an inch from that folded edge and you really don't need to backstitch because we're going to catch that in the seam in just a bit here so if you are using a metal zipper you'll want to come to the zipper the teeth and then just use your hand wheel to and turn it towards you and move that needle and see if that is going to hit a metal tooth or not this is plastic and i'm and it's pretty good but to go over i'm pretty confident that it's not going to break my needle so i'm just going to go so i'll just continue to sew [Music] so there's my stitching we'll do that on the other side so another thing i like to do is turn it over and make sure that i have caught the fabric take your scissors and cut the excess zipper tabs just along the edge of the zipper so it's the same width zippers can be really intimidating and there's no need for that no need to be nervous about this this is really quite easy and the first thing that we'll do is take your outer piece pull the zipper pull so it's down in the middle we'll be centering the zipper on the outer piece first and this is where your glue stick will come in handy now you don't have to use this but it really does help keep the zipper flat and in place but you don't want to go crazy with your application so i like to just grab a piece of scrap paper and we'll be applying just a thin strip of glue right on just on the barely on the inside you don't want to do it too far up this will wash out and it won't show it's clear but it's just best not to do get too much on there so i'm just putting a light application of glue along that edge and i'm not going to press it down on there yet i'm going to measure that half inch that's good i'm just going to line up the edge of the zipper with the edge of the fabric make sure i have a half inch on this edge which we do grab your lining piece and we're going to apply that on top right sides together i'm going to put another little strip of glue barely on the edge then i'll take my lining piece line up the top edge and then we'll clip it in place we'll take it to the sewing machine and sew all along that top edge backstitching at the beginning and the end of the seam before i sew this i'm going to bring my zipper pull down about three quarters of the way you'll want to make sure that when you bring your needle down that it's not going to hit your presser foot and also that it's the width that you want so naturally mine goes to a 3 8 inch seam allowance which is perfect so i'm going to continue to stitch if you need to adjust the needle to the left or the right do that now when you get close see that little lump right there that is the zipper pull and we need to move that out of the way so that we can sew past it turn your hand wheel toward you so it raises the needle to the uppermost position then i can pull the tab out of the way and when i continue to sew i'm going to go back just a little bit put my presser foot back down make sure that this the needle is going to go down in the same place where i started and continue to sew all the way off [Music] open up those pieces and this is what it will look like now we're going to do the same thing with the other pieces right side of the zipper to the right side of the outer piece and i'm going to apply another strip of that glue along my zipper or you could apply it to the edge of the outer piece if you wanted to we'll sew it in the same way [Music] so when you open it up this is what it will look like the lining on one side with the zipper in the middle and the outer fabric to give this edge by the zipper a nice finished edge we're going to press that seam open and then top stitch aren't those zipper tabs just so cute okay now we're going to take it to the sewing machine i'm leaving my zipper foot on with the edge of the zipper foot along the edge it will give me that 1 8 inch seam allowance that i want for top stitching now we're not going to top stitch all the way to the end here we're going to start at that zipper tab seam and sew across it again and then sew down to the seam here over and then down the other edge really important trick that i learned is to not sew all the way not top don'ts top stitch all the way down when we put it together you'll see what i mean in just a minute it allows us to get a better finish and a cleaner edge along this zipper tab so let's go to the machine and top stitch bring your presser foot along the edge of the zipper tab and we're going to start right there and so that you don't have that bunching up of thread at the beginning of your top stitching hold the thread for the first couple stitches i like to just turn my hand wheel for a couple stitches and then i can let go of that thread i'm going to back stitch and make sure that if you have metal zipper teeth that you go slow and maybe even stagger to get past those teeth so you're not hitting the needle on it this plastic one is fine i'm gonna get that zipper pull out of the way again needle down lift up my presser foot slide that out of the way if you want to apply a label to your bag this is the time to do it i have a tutorial showing you how to make your own tags and labels if you want to i'll put the link in the description below if you don't want to apply the label then you can just skip forward on the tutorial if you do i'm going to open this up on my outer piece decide where you want it to be placed i'm going to place it about there and you need to account for the seam allowance which is 3 8 of an inch so i'm going to see where that ends up i want to have that a little bit of that white border around my logo and then i will go to this machine and just stitch that in place right close to the edge of the fabric now we're ready to sew it together the first thing that you want to do is unzip your zipper halfway or maybe even a little bit more we're going to bring the outer pieces right sides together line up the bottom edges in the corners and pin it in place now the lining piece we are going to leave the about a three to four inch opening at the bottom so that we can turn it inside out this is one of the tips that will really help when we're putting this together is to open that up and spread the seam allowance open and press it and it seems like a little trivial thing but it really does help make a big difference when we're putting this together so i'm going to open those seams up so this area is crucial that we get this right so that this makes a really a night so that it makes a nice finish along that zipper tab we're going to pull the zipper tab fold it in just fold it over and point it towards the lining piece and the folds of the front piece make sure those are lined up seams are open as much as possible and then we'll clip that in place add a few more clips zipper tap towards the lining so we'll start sewing about right here sew all the way around and stop here leaving this opening i'm still using my zipper foot because that will give us the seam allowance that we need and help us stitch really close to that zipper tab i'm going to back stitch so the idea here is to sew as close to that zipper tab without stitching into it we have left a half inch and the seam allowance is 3 8 so it will be pretty close just take your time making sure that that stays lined up this is a good place to use your pointer tool or this is a little screwdriver that i like to use to help keep that fabric down [Music] i'm going to stop about right there leaving that opening backstitch now at this point you can decide whether you want to have a boxed bottom edge like this particular pencil pouch that i have here has a pretty big box to edge or this one has a small one and if you don't want to bother with that and you don't want a box bottom we'll just leave it like it is clip the corners and turn it inside out but i'll go ahead and show you how to do a boxed edge in case you do want to do that clip your corners first without cutting into the seam let me show you so you pull the fabric out the corners out like this and open up the seams you want to make sure that the whole thing is pulled out evenly and that the center this seam is lined up so it's centered i'm going to flatten that out and take your ruler if i just want this to be one inch like this one which i think i'll do you only measure halfway from that very corner point so you find where the stitching ends and bring your ruler top of the point to the half inch mark i like to find a line on the ruler so it goes straight up the seam and then take your sharp pencil and just mark that line across and then clip it in place and we'll do that for all four corners line that up with the half inch and then the line down the center the seam and then mark another way to do it is instead of opening up worrying about opening up the seam is to flip one seam allowance to the left and one seam allowance to the right and make sure that they are lined up and that's still going to create less bulk we'll go to the sewing machine and sew along just along that stitching line backstitching at the beginning of the end of the seam i am going to put my regular presser foot back on my machine [Music] clip your those corners a hat a quarter of an inch from the edge and now we're ready to turn it inside out this is where you'll take your turning stick through that opening and poke out the box corners and we'll come up to those zipper tabs and just poke your turning stick and see how nice that looks and the stick might come out the end and that's okay because we're just trying to get that open so all we have left to do besides pressing is to sew this opening closed and i'm going to just fold those seam allowances under i find if you pull it it kind of naturally folds under the same seam allowance but you might have to tweak it a little bit and then press it now if you really wanted to you could sew this by hand and you wouldn't see the stitching at all but i find if you just sew really really close to the edge there it's at the bottom of the bag it's on the inside of the bag and it really doesn't matter clip any threads stuff the lining into the bag poke out those corners so those box corners are kind of cute and if you do want it to stand up you know you can have a bigger box corner see how nice those zipper tabs there's some threads that just gives it a nice finished edge and you don't have that curvy bulky weirdness going on if you don't put those zipper tabs let's give it a pressing pulling out the seams turned out pretty dang cute i think so here's some bonus instructions and some bonus tips on how you can embellish these pouches if you wanted to make a bag that's two colors or two prints like i have with this essential oil cosmetic bag and i have the pattern for this on my website it's kind of fun to make one that's two different colors this is an upcycled sweater on the bottom and a print on the top so how you would how you would do that depending on what size you want if i wanted to do half denim and half a floral print which would be really cute depending on what size you want all you do is cut two pieces out and decide how much proportion you want for each thing and just place them right sides together and i want the majority of this probably to be denim because i'm going to have that boxed bottom so i'll pull that up a little bit i don't want to do quite halfway and then all you do is sew right sides together i'll sew that down and then flip it over and top stitch then you could use this piece for the back or you could use there's so many options so if you wanted to embellish anything else on the front panel you want to do that before you start sewing it together i think it will be cute to add your logo or something right there on that seam i would just zigzag around that edge a tight satin stitch and if you want to add an applique like i have with this denim pouch this is upcycled wool sweater just place it on there and i have sewn a blanket stitch around the edge most machines will have that basic applique stitch and if you don't you can do this you could do this by hand as well so i'll show you how to do it on this particular heart just find the setting on your machine and this is what it looks like on my machine so i'll choose that when you're going around the corner you can stop lift up your presser foot and just slowly ease your way around that corner when you stop and adjust you always want to make sure that the needle's in the downright position and then lift up your presser foot oh my gosh look how cute that is so there you have it some extra tips on how you can embellish the pouches and stay tuned for an upcoming tutorial where i show you how to make some really fun unique zipper pulls thanks so much for watching i hope you found that helpful and i hope you find some joy in sewing these simple projects get out your sewing machine take a little time for yourself and make something fun if you haven't subscribed to the channel yet make sure you do that and click on the bell in your notifications so that you can be notified when i put some new things up have a wonderful day and we'll see you next time [Music]

Channel: Jan Howell

Views: 86,792

Keywords: zipper pouch tutorial, zipper pouch with tabs, zipper pouch with boxed corners, zipper pouch with tabs tutorial, zipper pouch with flat bottom, zipper pouch, lined zipper pouch, how to make a zipper pouch, diy zipper pouch, zipper pouch with lining, how to sew a zipper pouch, easy lined zipper pouch tutorial, pencil pouch sewing tutorial, sewing tutorial, zipper pouch sewing tutorial, easy zipper pouch sewing tutorial, tab zipper pouch sewing tutorial

Id: wc5g641ZH0A

Length: 30min 22sec (1822 seconds)

Published: Fri May 13 2022