Small sewing project tutorial.

[leaky5]

This tutorial is to make a small pouch with zipped pocket across the back and is meant to be an easy project for a beginner.

Size is up to you, mine is made to take an A6 pocket book (IIRC the size of a field notes book) in the front pocket.
The D ring on my one comes out through the zipper end and can be used to attach to a bag or similar.

You will need-
4 pieces of material approx. 2 x15x20cm and 2 smaller
1 zip at least 20cm long
Sewing machine and thread.
Double sided tape is helpful, I use 8mm sail makers tape.
Tailors chalk is also useful

Optional-
D ring and webbing
Grosgrain (or similar) ribbon for binding. For some projects the hardest part is finding ribbon to match the material colour.

The pouch will be made as two sections-
Front, with book and pen sections.
Rear, with zipper.

These are then sewn together. There are two ways to do this and I will go into this in more detail later on.

 

[leaky5]

Back / Zipper section.

On one of the pieces of material, draw a line (don’t worry about what sort of pen, you won’t see any ink) about 40mm parallel to one of the longer side, then cut the material into two pieces along this line.

Binding will make this look more professional. So if binding, run some double sided tape along both sides of each cut edge and lay the binding tape so it is folded over the cut edge.
If not binding just run the double sided tape along the rear of the cut edge and fold over the material about 10mm to give a nice straight edge. This is still a nice durable finish.



When I attach the zipper, I don’t like the teeth to go under the sewn edges. So first I work out the length I want the zipper to be and then I add a small piece of material across the zip



Rear section laid together before sewing.




Front section is three pieces of material. The larger 15x20 piece plus the angled pocket and pen pocket sewn to the front.

 

[leaky5]

At this point you could lay the sections together face to face and just sew around the edge.




I will continue this with external binding.

I bind the top and bottom first, cut the excess flush to the edge.



Then on the sides I cut the ribbon about 20mm longer than the sides and fold the excess to the back.




With D ring out



Binding at the back is a bit messy, I rushed the last bit. The whole thing took about 45 minutes.