Zippered Lined Pouch

Tis' the season for teacher gifts!  Like most days, I have a quest to find something whether it be a recipe or a crafty project or a how-to sewing technique.  Like most instances, Pinterest is the place to remedy such quest.  A few years back before Pinterest existed, I had to figure out on my own how to make a zippered, lined pouch.  I had to make about 30 of them for a baby shower (Yay, Virgie!) and luckily developed a successful technique about 2 pouches into the process.  Had I known I could probably just googled the tutorial, I would have saved myself some grief. However, the technique was permanently imprinted in my brain, so that's a good thing.

My daughter's kindergarten teacher uses her ipad at school on occasion to teach (or so my daughter says). I think that's pretty cool as technology is a close second when it comes to ruling the world (behind money, of course).  For a teacher gift,  I simply refuse to do an apple craft or some sort of pencil/crayon collage and was really searching for something original and useful.  Hence, the ipad cover.  Even if she already has a cover for her ipad (likely), I thought it would still be a good gift and could even be used for a Kindle or similar e-reader.

I logged onto pinterest to find this tutorial via this pin so I could finally get Sarah off my back about holding my weight on this blog.  If I could find a tutorial, then I could review it.  Perfect!  For this craft I picked out a 45" width home decor weight at JoAnn's, lined it with a pretty flannel that was in my stash and in between them used a high quality, low loft, cotton quilt batting that I already had as well.

The pin from Skip to my Lou does a great job of explaining exactly how to make a zippered, lined pouch.  Luckily, it's the same way I devised long ago and is probably the only real way to do it. I really like how she explains the lining up of the fabrics and even shows how she didn't line them up correctly for us "real life" gals.  Here's mine:

Sewed the batting onto the outer fabric before starting

Pinning is really important. Keep those edges alligned!

Here's what it looks like before stitching on the zipper

After stitching on the zipper

Ready to stitch the outsides together

The zipper works!

Finished piece

I am proud to give this pin a "5 Pin" rating for several reasons.  I was able to complete this craft in under an hour, the instructions are very concise, clear and easy to follow with great pictures.  Also, you could potentially have all of the materials in your possession.  If ever you're at a thrift store or yard sale and you see zippers, buy them!  It's always nice to have something like that on hand.

Happy Pinning!