I learned to make zippered pouches in October when I visited my sister in Illinois. A zippered-pouch sounded too scary; a tutorial I would just skip over & never consider trying. My sister, however, is fearless & got me to make a couple different types & guess what? They're are super easy, way easier than adding a zipper to a garment. That doesn't mean that I make them to perfection. On the contrary. I made 2 sets of 3 pouches & 2 pencil bags for presents & I still these 3 pouches had me sweating. Who gets stress sweats from sewing zippered-pouches?! Look not-so-closely at the photos & you'll see how off my seams are. How does that happen?!
I'd just finished sewing in all of the zippers, when I realized I'd forgotten a stabilizer...and remembered that I was out of stabilizer. Argh. I'd run to JoAnn's later.
In the meantime I thought I'd add a flower to each bag. Margie is a fan of these little flowers & I have a boatload of felt circles leftover from unfinished brooches for a craft fair. I stitched each flower together & stitched it to a bag front using the technical measuring system of 2-fingers from the side-edge & 2 or 3 from the top, depending on size of the bag. I also glued the petals together to keep them from curling up over time.
At this point I rushed off to for a play date
The larger two bags have boxed corners which I learned from this tutorial at Noodlehead. I will make more bags that I hope, at some point, will look more like hers. I like the little tab at the end w/the liner fabric for contrast.
Gosh, I made a lot of mistakes while making these bags - even more than I've already 'fessed up to. Here are a couple more: when top-stitching the top fabric I caught the liner fabric - twice! - & had to rip seams. I snipped a hole in the smaller bag when I was trimming the stabilizer & had to use an iron-on patch to close it. As ever, I didn't leave myself much of a hole to flip the bags right-side out. And, and, and.
All of that & Margie loves the bags. She doesn't see any of the mistakes. She just sees that I took time to make something specifically for her. I even used fabric I'd purchased when we'd gone shopping in the fabric district in L.A...she loved that fabric. Perfection is not an option for me. Shoot, it's not even a goal. I want to continue to improve at everything I do but it has to be fun & the stress of perfection is Anti-fun, yes, with a capital 'A'.
I've done zippered pouches but zippers still scare me! These are really cute bags. That fabric is great and the flowers are a nice detail.
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