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(Intro music.)
Here are the supplies we're going to need to make our zippered box pouch. I like to
use the Lapel Stick as a fabric glue stick to help the zipper stick to my fabric; it
makes for easy sewing. Some pins of course. Then you want to make sure that your sewing
machine has a zipper foot; mine looks like this, yours may look a little different. You
also want to use some coordinating thread. And then we have our two pieces of fabric,
one for the outside and the inside. And then a piece of batting.
I cut two fabric pieces out here that measure 14 inches by 15 inches. Then I'm going to
take some of my Lapel Stick and I'm just going to go around the edges and do a little bit
in the center. Notice I'm putting the glue on the backside of my fabric. Here I have
a larger piece of batting. You always want to go a little bit bigger on the batting.
And so what we want to do is smooth out our fabric from the center out, so we don't have
any air bubbles or puckers. I'm going to turn the batting over and I'm going to do the same
thing with the piece of fabric that I want to use for the outside of my zipper pouch.
Do the same thing with the Lapel Stick; you're going to add your glue around the edges, and
then a little bit in the center. So you're going to do the same thing, place your fabric
right on top, smooth everything out from the center out so you don't have any puckers.
And this is what the finished bag is going to look like. What we need to do now is do
some quilting stitches, which is basically just playing around with the decorative stitches
on your sewing machine. You can see on this pouch I have some zigzag stitches, and so
I think that's what I'm going to do on this one as well.
So this is going to be the pretty side, and you can see I've done already some lines,
and basically I just went with the edge. You can measure and trace out your lines with
a chalk marker or a pencil, but in this case for me it's not going to make that much of
a difference. I just want to put my quilt sandwich, which is the three layers, right:
The fabric, the batting in between, and the fabric behind. I want them all to be stitched
down and stitched together.
You can see I've just taken a basic zigzag stitch and just stitching, trying to stay
as straight as I can since I didn't draw any lines ahead of time. You can do whatever you
want, any direction; you can do some free-motion quilting here as well. You're going to do
that for the entire piece. In whatever quilting design you decide to do, use a coordinating
thread.
You can see I'm done. And what happens is that the batting shifts around a little bit
maybe on you. So now we've cut our batting. Remember we cut it larger so we can now trim
everything down to size. So I just trimmed one side to make it straight. I'm going to
take my ruler and I'm going to measure 14 inches. Notice I'm trimming it down to 14
inches, so this is the side that was previously 15 inches, okay. Make sure you're trimming
down the correct sides. I cut one parallel side, then the other. And
I'm going to turn it so now I can trim that 14-inch side down to 13 inches. That way we
get rid of any of the excess batting we have and we can flush up all our edges.
So I straighten out one side, turn it over so I can cut the opposing parallel side. And
the reason I'm trimming it to 13 inches is because I'm using, on that length of the little
pouch, I'm going to be using a 12-inch zipper. So I always like to cut my fabric pieces one
inch larger than what the size of the zipper is. Because if you've seen a zipper, it has
a little extra on the zipper tape on both ends.
So now I'm going to just take a zigzag stitch and stitch all around all the raw edges. Nice
and easy. And you can see here, what I'm doing is I have the zigzag going right off of the
right-side edge of my fabric. What that does is it keeps all those raw edges from fraying
any further. You can see where the needle comes down on the right-side edge it's going
right off the edge of the fabric. And continue to do that along or around all four sides.
Once your fabric piece is complete and measure both sides, you see that's 14 and this is
the 13-inch side. So the one that measures 13 inches is where you want to lay your 12-inch
long zipper. Because you can see on both ends the zipper has a little bit of extra zipper
tape on each end, so it's almost to 13 inches exact.
This is how the zipper box pouch is going to look once it's finished. The zipper's going
to go along this edge and everything is going to square around it like that.
Now, we're going to take one side, remember this is the edge that measures 13 inches.
I'm laying my zipper on it. You see the zipper pull is going to be face down, and then the
right-side edge needs to match up with this right-side edge of my fabric as well.
So the bulk of your fabric piece should be to your left. And then when we sew that down,
once it's flipped back, you can see that the zipper teeth and the zipper pull will be exposed.
Now, for this you want to make sure you have a zipper foot for your sewing machine. You
see, it has two openings on both sides; yours might look a little different but it's the
same idea. There's a little tunnel underneath here; that's going to allow the foot to glide
right over those zipper teeth. And you can see what you have there is a little opening
where the needle is going to come down and it's going to allow you to stitch super close
to those zipper teeth on both sides.
To baste down my zipper, I like to use the Lapel Stick as well, which is fabric-safe
glue stick, and I'm putting that on the right side of the zipper tape and on the right side
of that fabric edge. I'm going to lay it on top, where it should be. Remember, the zipper
pull should be towards the bottom and face down as well. And I'm going to press that
in place so that it can hold it for me as I stitch it into place.
Now I'm installing the zipper foot in my machine. And I like to put it here on the left side
of the foot; mine is a snap-on foot. You can see what I mean by that, that I'm going to
be stitching on the right side of the zipper teeth. So you see where the needle is going
to come down, it's going to run real nice and close to those zipper teeth, but to the
right side of it without going over it.
So I'm starting at the top and you can see that I'm lining up my zipper foot with the
edge there along the edge of the rest of my fabric and the zipper tape towards the right
side. I'm just going to stitch down the entire length, staying close to those zipper teeth
but not going over them.
Now, when we get to the edge you can see that the zipper pull itself is going to get in
our way, so you want to stop -- I got a little bit too close here, but you want to stop at
least an inch or two behind it. Stop with the needle down into your fabric, and then
you need to lift it so that you can pull back the zipper pull and make way for the remaining
stitches to go all the way to the end. Just like this.
Now this is where you should have sewn down your zipper. You see when I pull it back we
now have this flipped-up edge on the inside which is our seam allowance. We need to stitch
that down as well, because when we open our zipper and we're using the pouch, we don't
want to run the risk of having any of that get caught in the zipper teeth.
So we're going to top stitch right along here, again using our zipper foot. Here's a stitch
line that I stitched previously. And then a little bit over, in the remaining seam allowance,
I'm now going to stitch it up from here. You can decide whether you want to stitch
it from the right side or the wrong side. I just like to be able to see exactly where
I am on the zipper, on the zipper tape itself, and so I'm just going to stitch it down from
the backside. You can see I'm staying real close to that bottom edge, and I want to stitch
all of that down to keep the inside of my zipper pouch nice and flat.
(Music.)
So now that our pouch is starting to come together, you can see how it's going to look
when it's finished. That's the inside, this is going to be the outside; and this is going
to be sewn down there but with the right sides and the pretty sides of the zipper and the
fabric touching. That needs to be sewn to the pretty side of the fabric in order to
be in the correct orientation.
So we're going to flip it with the pretty sides touching. You can see that the pretty
side is now touching the pretty side of the tape, of the zipper tape. So you want to line
up this edge, and now make sure that you're lining up with the edge of your fabric, not
the edge of the zipper. Because you can see that there's a little extra zipper tape there.
So just line up with your fabric and now you can either Lapel Stick this down like I did
previously, or you can also just pin it in place.
I've taken my Lapel Stick here, put it on the zipper tape itself. And then you can just
fold it over, and put the pretty side of the fabric to the pretty side of that zipper tape.
And I like to stitch everything down with the zipper tape facing up, just so I can see
exactly where I am. So I'm going to flip this over, make sure that those raw edges of the
tape and the fabric underneath are lining up nicely. You can also pin this in place
if you don't have the Lapel Stick.
And now we're going to stitch down close to the zipper teeth but on the opposite side.
Because we're stitching on the opposite side of the zipper teeth now, I need to change
my zipper foot. So mine is a snap-on. I'm going to just pop it off and scoot it over
so that it now sews on the right side of the foot itself. Okay.
And now you can see with the fabric here where we have the zipper pull, you see it's at the
top, we want to flip it so that the zipper pull is towards the bottom. And that's going
to give us the correct orientation of our fabric. So you see now, where I see the needle
is running, I can now get that nice and close to the zipper teeth and I'm matching up now
the outside left edge with the edge of my presser foot.
So with your basic straight stitch, you're going to stitch all the way down the zipper
tape. Remember, when you get to the end you want to stop a little bit before you reach
the zipper pull and then open it so you reach the last little bit.
After your two lines of stitching look like that, then remember to stitch down that seam
allowance as well. We want to either press that down or pin it down if you need to, and
then we're going to stitch close to that zipper tape edge.
Now, to topstitch that seam allowance down, you can open up your piece, turn it so that
now you can stitch right along there on the edge, and top stitch it into place. You want
to try to get these as even as possible. And since I'm stitching it from the pretty side
of the fabric, now I just wanted to show you a different way of doing it.
And then just work with it and stitch it all the way. Remember that since your zipper is
now completely attached to both pieces of fabric, it will get a little tight towards
the end, but just keep everything nice and flat, and just work it with your fingers and
you should be able to get it just fine.
You can see this last little bit here is a tricky part, but it's really not that difficult.
Just smooth it out, watch your fingers, and just stitch it right off the edge. And now
your entire zipper is stitched and topstitched right into place, so you can see.
Now we're going to turn the entire thing inside out, so that the lining fabric is out. And
now what you want to do is line up these edges and you can set that zipper, you want it right
down the center, okay. And we're going to place two pins here to hold these layers in
place. So we lined up the zipper down the center; you notice that my lining fabric is
what's outside.
You want to repeat that on both sides and now we're going to stitch this down with a
quarter-inch seam allowance. Make sure that you open up the zipper a little bit so that
you don't catch the zipper pull or run the risk of sewing over that. And we're going
to do the same thing on both sides. You see I stitch with a straight stitch here about
a quarter of an inch from the edge; backstitch at the beginnings and at the ends; trim away
any excess zipper tape that you have, and you're going to repeat that to the other side.
Now make sure that you keep this zipper open, okay, because if it's closed you're going
to have a tough time flipping it inside out. You can open the zipper a little more, and
now we're going to pop out all four corners. Now just turn everything right side out, bring
out all four corners, and poke out all the fabric as best as you can.
And you can see that it's already a finished, flatter zipper pouch. If you wanted to keep
it like this to store some wider, flatter items, feel free to finish your project right
here, but if you want to have those box corners, let me show you how to do that as well.
So for the box corners you're going to reach your fingers into one of the corners. And
notice I'm making like a triangle here with a side seam running right down the center.
So your fabric is flat. Put your finger inside and then pull the fabrics on the side so you
end up with that center seam right down the center of that triangle. Then you want to
place a pin there. You're going to repeat this to the remaining three corners, okay.
I'm putting my finger inside the corner, pulling the fabrics on the sides to get a triangle
point, and have the side seam running right down the center. Once you've pinned all four
corners, you want to measure one and a half inches in from the tip. So at one-and-a-half-inch
mark, I'm going to make a little line here.
And then you can see I'm going to turn it on its side and I'm going to try to line up
everything as straight as I can get it. And you're going to draw a line all the way across
that triangle. This is going to be your stitching line after you do it to all four corners.
So measuring again, one and a half inches, you're going to repeat that to all four corners.
Then you're going to take a straight stitch, you want to backstitch at the beginning and
at the end, and you're going to straight stitch on the line that you drew out. Make sure to
turn that seam allowance one side or the other so it lays flat. And keep stitching, backstitching
at the end as well.
Once you've done that to all four corners, you can now trim away this excess seam allowance.
I just lay it down and cut it down to about a quarter of an inch or so. And then I like
to take it to my sewing machine and zigzag stitch the edge just to give a neater look.
Trim off all your corners and just zigzag stitch them down to prevent any further fraying.
Then you're ready to turn all those corners right side out, pushing out any fabric that
may be stuck in those little corners. And you're done with your box zipper pouch.
(Ending music.)