How to Sew a Quilted Zipper Pouch

1. Welcome to How to Sew a Quilted Zipper Pouch!: Hello and welcome to a Skillshare class where I teach you how to sew a quilted Canvas, zippered pouch that is fully lined. My name is Jenny of not only being, I am a culture and quilt pattern writer and lover of all making all of the things. I actually got my start into quilting by first sewing garments and persons and quilted pouches like these. This project is a great project if you're someone that is new to sewing zippers and wants to learn how. You'll get a useful fun item that you can use at the end and you can tackle your fear of sewing zippers. Make sure you click on the link in the class notes. And that gives you a resource, a free downloadable resource guide that includes written instructions of everything we're gonna go over in this course. Then if you're someone, it also has the fabric requirements. So you can go through and get all of the requirements. I do use Canvas for this particular for my pouches and that's what I'm referring to in the instructions. But if you don't have canvas and you just have like quilting cotton or any other regular cotton that would work as well. It just wouldn't be quite as sturdy as you could see. It kind of holds its shape when it's done. If you're not using Canvas, it will still be a wonderful pouch, total usable. It just wouldn't be quite as firm when it is completely finished with that. Thank you for taking this class with me and I am excited to so a pouch with you. Let's get started. 2. Class Project!!: Let's take a moment to talk about our class project before getting started. When we are finished, we will have a quilted super pouch. And I do encourage you to take pictures of the fabric that you pick, the zipper that you pick. And then of course you're finished pouch at the end and upload those pictures in the class projects below. I did make two pouches while I was working on filming this class. And I will be uploading my project to the course. Projects I should say, and I encourage you to do the same. I am looking forward to seeing all of the super awesome pouches that everybody makes. 3. Lesson 1: Quilt your panels: In lesson one, we are going to be quilting our exterior panels. For this pouch. I'm gonna be using this Rifle Paper co Canvas from the Primavera line has those super cute pineapples and then I just have two pieces of batting. And so we're going to base, we're going to make half of a quilt sandwich. We're not going to put any backing. It's just gonna be the canvas and the Batting. You can based at one of three ways. You can either pin based, which is where you put safety pins to hold it together. You can use spray base or you can glue based for little projects like these, I prefer either glue basting or spray basting. There's small manageable. You don't have to worry about the fabric and the binding shifting too much. So I'm gonna go ahead and use glue to baste this. So I will demo that and then I'm also going to demo marking and quilting. I'm gonna be doing a diagonal grid quilts on this. And so I'm going to mark it up. I'm going to use my ruler and a marketing tool and mark the lines. And then I'm gonna go to my machine and quilt it and I'm gonna do the exact same. I'm gonna do the same quilting pattern on both sides of the pouch. And so with that, I'm going to start basting, quilting. Hearing I am glue basting. You can just use regular Elmer's glue. It is, it really washes out. If you use a thin layer like I did here for a small project, it works really well and keeping everything in place. And so I just go through and I do kind of an x from corner to corner. And then in those gaps, I'll put a small thin line towards the edge. Try to line it up pretty easily. And then I do press pressing will help dry the glue and keep it in place so that you can begin quilting right away. Otherwise, you would want to wait a little bit for the glue to dry. Then after I'm done basting, I start marking my quote lines. This is totally optional, but I'm doing a diagonal grid and I did want that measurements to be precise. The tool I'm using is a tool for carpet makers. It puts a chalk line that washes off in brushes off. And then here I'm just using my ruler and I'm measuring out one inch lines and marketing those one-inch lines. My ruler also has a 45 degree angle line, which you can see down towards the bottom. And so that's the first thing I'm doing is giving myself a 45-degree line as my starting point and then using that to measure one inch. So now I'm going back over the other side of the grid and marking it. And then I'm going to do the same thing for the other panel but not show it. Then once you have both panels marked, it looks like this again, totally optional. You can quilt however you would like. But then when you will then take your marked panels to your machine and again quilt as desired. So I am doing the diagonal grid, so I'm just going to quilt on the lines that I marked. When you're quilting, you want to start and stop on the batting. That way when you trim it down, you have nice clean lines and you don't have to worry about the alignment you sewed pulling apart because you're starting on the batting and stopping on the batting. There I start on the batting, I come down, I'm selling the line. I'm sewing all the way off my fabric onto the batting and then I'm going to pick up my foot, cut the threads, and do the next line. Next, we move on to a time-lapse as I finished quilting the panels. Once I get all of my lines quilted on the first panel, I'm going to set it aside and repeat the same steps. Just quilt on all the mark lines on the second panel. Then once that is completed, we're going to trim off our excess batting. We're going to grab our ruler or cutting mat or rotary cutter. We're going to line up the ruler on the edge of the canvas and we're gonna trim off the excess batting. And when we trim the excess batting, it also has all of those loose threads from the quilting since we started and stopped on the batting. So all of that is getting trimmed away. And we will set it to the side and then we will set to the side are quilted panels, the exterior of our pouches completed at this point. And in the next lesson, we will prep our zipper. 4. Lesson 2: Prepare your zipper: In lesson two, we're going to jump right into prepping our zipper. So you're going to want your zipper, you're going to want your small tabs and you're going to want pins or binder clips. I do prefer binder clips. Helps you get a better control on what you're wanting to keep in place. For the zipper. I prefer to use Sally tomatoes at burrs by the yard. And here I'm demonstrating how to get the zipper pull on. So you'll pull, you'll cut about your desired length, unzip it by hand. The zipper pull on 1.5 and then put the other side in and then just kind of I hold the back tails. You'll see I hope they held the back tales in place and then pull the zipper. It'll give it a slightly off finish. And so you'll trim it even again. And then you'll measure the zipper down to your actual desired length for your pouch and then trim the other side. You'll want the zipper to be 1.5 inch shorter than the length of your pouch. So for my pieces, they are ten inches and so I want my zipper to measure 9.5 interests. So I'm going to measure that out. Put a clip in. Just clip a little bit so that I know where to go in and cut my line. And then I hold the zipper in a manner where it's a little bit easier to cut. And then I'll cut it down to that 9.5 inches. And again, this is why I love the Sally tomatoes zippers because it looks metal, but at the teeth are actually nylon so you can go through them and cut through them without damaging your sewing machine and scissors. Then we'll set our zipper aside and we'll pick up our tab and we're going to prep these. And the first thing we do is fold them in half. Then go ahead and press to give a nice even crease in that line. We'll do that for both tabs. Then you will take you'll open it and then you'll fold the tails into that middle crease, refold the middle crease, and then we're gonna press that down. Here. I'll show a close-up of what that's going to look like. You'll do that same with both and then that will give you that way. There's no raw edges on your zipper. Once we get it fully prepped, here, we're gonna repeat the same thing on the other side. Get them nice and pressed. Then you'll pick up your zipper and you're just going to place the ends inside the zipper tabs that we prepped. You'll put it on. Then you'll get a clip and clip it in place. I'll do the same thing with the other side. I'm demonstrating here, it's hard to get it closed when you have the super close, we actually want the zipper back a little bit that way you can get your ends nice and close to one another. But the tab on and clip it in place. And then we're going to take these to the sewing machine and we're going to secure them to the zipper. And so I like to go over what works for me is to go over it twice. So the first thing I do is go over it with the bottom of the zipper facing up. Then I use the binder clip to help push it through the machine because sometimes the bulk makes it difficult for the feed dogs to pull it through and so you do have to push a little bit. And so once I so through with the bottom of the zipper up, I cut all the threads. And then I'm going to come back through and do the same thing with the top of the zipper facing up. I do like to go over it twice to make sure it's nice and secure. Again, you kind of have to help push it through the bulk of the zipper makes it difficult for the feed dogs to pull it through on its own depending on your machine. Then your zipper is fully prompt and we're ready to move on. 5. Lesson 3: Attach your zipper: In lesson three, we're going to attach the zipper to her bag. You're begin with one side, one piece of exterior, your one piece of lining, the zipper and some clips or pins. You'll take the exterior of your bag and you're gonna face it right side up. Again, mine has directional print on it, so I make sure that I'm putting the zipper on what I consider the top. You will lineup the zipper, you will center it. Remember it is 1.5 inch shorter than the bag exterior, so you want to center it and then have the zipper facing down and line up that top edge and pin or clip into place. You'll want the zipper to be just a little bit open. That way it's easier to move around once you begin sewing it. Once you have the zipper pinned to the exterior of the bag, you will grab your interior lighting piece. There's my right side pretty sight of the fabric and you're going to want it facing down. And so you want the right sides of your fabric touching the zipper. So once you have the, the lining of your bag also lined up against the top, you will pin in place. And so since I'm using the Eclipse, I'm just going through and adjusting my clips as I'm getting that waning secured into place. And then once you have it all lined up, you're going to take it to your machine. And so a quarter inch seam here, my machine, I'm going to use my zipper foot. This is what my zipper foot looks like. It puts pressure on only one side of the needle rather than both sides that we can get nice and close to your zippered is at birth. Then you place the fabric. And I I tried to get it as close again to the zipper as possible. Once it's in place, I usually will put the needle down and then start sewing and I get as close as possible to the clips before I removed the clips to minimize shifting. Once you approach the zipper, pull, you'll want the needle down and then go in and slide that zipper out of your way and then continue on sewing the rest. Then once you've sown one side, you're going to pull the lining and the exterior away from the zipper and kinda help press it in place. You'll pull the lining. I usually kind of get the exterior out of the way as well, but I start with the lining side and I get it nice and pulled away from the zipper. And then I will grab my iron and press that seem to help keep it secure. I will flip it over and do the exact same thing with the exterior. I'll pull in nice and tight. You'll see it starts to line up with blinding underneath that. Then I will use the iron to press that into place. Now once I have this side pressed and placed, we're going to copy these steps for the other side of our bag. So they will take the other side of our exterior, place it with the right side facing up and again being mindful directional fabric. If you have directional fabric, then you will take this piece that we're working on now and place it right side down so the zipper sides facing down, the right side of the fabric, facing the other right side of the fabric. Line up the top, clip it into place, take our lining, put it down, right side down, clip it into place and take it to the machine. And so, and so as we can see, I have done that here. And so I'm going to repeat the steps of pressing the lining, the interior and the exterior out. So I start with the lining, pull it and then to grab my iron precedent to place flip it over, pull that exterior out, and then go ahead and press it to keep it secure. And then once we have done that, we're gonna go back to the machine one last time. We're going to top stitch. We're going to line up our pieces and we're going to top stitch approximately a quarter inch from the zipper. And then you'll want to make sure that you're capturing all layers, both the exterior lighting and then of course, the zipper that is within the seam will just go along and get a nice top stitching against. Sometimes it's you gotta help it get started. There is a lot of bulk and so sometimes the feed dogs can't pull through and you have to help get it started. But then once you get started, go through. And so we're nice quarter inch seam. You'll do this for both sides of the bag. And then once that step is complete, we are ready to move on to the next lesson. 6. Lesson 4: Sew the pouch together: In lesson four, we're going to, so the pouch together. Now we're going to take our pieces and we're going to line up the exterior sides together. In the interior sides together. So we're going to line up the exterior pieces right sides together and kind of click them into place. And then I'm going to flip it over and line up the lining pieces right sides together and clip in place. And we're gonna want the bulk of the zipper to end up on the lining side. And I will show you how I kind of get everything lined up. So first I line up the exterior side roughly, and then I come and do the same thing on the interior side roughly. Now I go back to my exterior side and I just start pinning towards the zipper or clipping in my case. I mean, I do one side and then I go down to the other side and do the same thing in everything nice and clipped into place approaching those at birth. Then when I get to the zipper as I am now, going to press everything nice and flat and push the bulk of the zipper towards the lighting side. As you can see there, the bulk of the zippers inside the lining side. Then I am going to clip that into place. And I'm going to do that for both sides of the bag. Press the zipper nice and flat. I have the other side, the bulk of it on providing side. And now I'm going to remove those initial clips that I put in so that I can get everything nice and flat and secure and I'm going to clip all the way around. And then once I've clicked all the way around, I'm gonna take this to my machine and I'm going to sew a quarter inch seam most of the way around the bag. We're going to want to leave a gap on the lining side for turning the bag. I'm going to essentially so all the way around, leaving that gap right there and then go back all the way around. Here at my machine. This is again sped up a little bit. I think it's sped up two times. I'm just sewing all the way around the exterior of the bag. When I get to a corner, you place the needle down, lift the foot, and then flip the bag the 90 degrees, put the foot back down and begin sewing again. When you get to the zipper again, you might have to help feed through because once it gets a little bulky, depending on your sewing machine, the feed dogs might need a little extra help getting all of that bulk through the machine. Here I'm at the bottom. I'm going to show up to that first clip back stitch a little bit, leave a big gap. And then start again. I'll back stitch a little bit and then I just continue sewing around the exterior of the bag. Again, I do prefer to keep my zipper foot on just so that when I get to the bulk there at the sides were at catches up to the zipper. It is a little bit easier to get nice and close to the zipper. And then once you've sown all the way around, you'll pull the bag from the machine and then clip your threads. And then the last thing I do is I clip the corner so that when I'm turning my bag right side out, there's a little bit less bulk in the corners. Here I'm flipping my threads. I will click the corners. And then this step is complete. 7. Lesson 5: Turn and finish your pouch: All right, In the last lesson, we sort our pouch together and now we're going to be turning it. We're going to use that gap. We left and we're going to start feeding the bag through. And then when you get to the zipper, you will just flip the exterior of the bag all the way through that zipper as well. And so this is sped up, as you can see in it does take a little bit of funneling the technical term funding going to get everything through. Then once everything is kind of the right side out, then spend some time making sure that you have your corners pressed all the way through. I like to go through first with my hand and get everything pulled together, and then grab a pencil or a turning tool to get nice crisp corners. It'll help you get everything nice and flat. So you'll do that with the exterior of the bag. And then you will do the same thing with the corners of the lining of the bag. And then we're going to so the gap closed and so kind of hand press the seam allowance back in and then I'll clip it into place. And then I'm gonna take this to my machine and I'm gonna so as close as possible to the edge. So it's probably about an eighth of an inch seam. Here it is clipped in place. And then I'm gonna take this domain machine. And so about 1 eighth of an inch seam all the way along the bottom to secure the bottom of my lining closed. Some people do prefer to hand stitch that whole closed, then that way you won't see the seam. But my personal preference with the way I use these bags because it's an aligning. And I'm gonna be throwing stuff in and out of these bags and using them. I don't mind so much that I'm gonna see that seam and I prefer machine so a closed so that I know it is nice and secure. So I have that seem sown. I'm going to click my threads. And then I'm going to now tuck the interior into the bag. I'm gonna get the lining talked back in, pressing it in with my hands, getting it nice and flat and secure along the bottom. Now the bag is just about complete, so I get everything in there. I pull it closed, go ahead and close the zipper, lay it down flat. And then the last thing I'm gonna do here is some final pressing. So I'm gonna grab my iron, press around the seams, press around the zipper and just get everything nice and pressed. And once it is pressed, the pouches ready to be used. Congratulations. 8. Class Wrap Up: That's it. Our pouch is done, so we've got a fully lined zipper pouch. The finished size is approximately nine inches by seven inches of the grid size to stick in your purse or if you're traveling, it's a great kind of carry on tuck in your carry-on bag with you. You could quilted a few different ways. I've made a couple. This one's got the diagonal quilting. Here's one with some straight line quilting. Again, I encourage you to when you're done, take a picture of your finished pouch and put it in the Create a project. And I hope you enjoyed making the bag. I hope you enjoy using your bag. And think.