Hello! I’ve got a quick and easy zipper pouch formula to share with you today. If you have any questions let me know in the comments or message me over on Instagram!
The pattern
My go-to pattern for zipper pouches is Purl Soho’s Quilted Zipper Pouch. I love it because it uses French seams, which means no unfinished raw edges inside. And it’s so simple that once you’ve made a few you can pretty much make them without going back to the instructions. The only hitch is that the original pattern is for pouches that are on the largish side, at 14 inches wide. If that’s your jam, just follow the original pattern.
The formula
If however, like me, you find yourself with a real grab bag of zippers in your stash, of all sizes, just use this simple formula and you’ll be able to make do with what you already have:
pouch exterior = (zipper width + 2.5″) x ([finished pouch height x 2] + 0.25″)
The details:
- Start with the width of your zipper. The width of a zipper is considered the distance between the ends of the metal or plastic zipper itself, not the surrounding fabric. Add 2.5 inches to that width.
- Decide what height you want your finished pouch to be. Multiply that by two, and add 0.25 inches.
- Choose fabric for your pouch exterior and cut it to the dimensions above. For example, if your zipper is 8 inches, and you want a pouch about 6 inches tall, cut your fabric to be at least 10.5 inches x 12.25 inches.
- Cut your interior fabric just a little bit bigger than the exterior piece, then create a quilt sandwich by placing a piece of scrap batting between the two. (The fabrics should both be right sides out, away from the batting.)
- Quilt the fabrics and batting together.
- Complete the rest of the steps for the zipper pouch as described over here. In a nutshell, you’ll zig zag the top and bottom edges, sew the right sides of the zipper to the exterior sides of the pouch (where you’ve just zigzagged). With the the exterior facing out, sew a scant quarter inch seam along the open sides. It feels weird but it’s just like when you French seam a garment. Now flip it inside out, trim the corners, and sew about a half an inch along each side (at or just outside the edge of the zipper), concealing the raw edges. Flip it back to right side out, and you have a pouch!
For the pouch pictured here (and in this video over on Instagram) I included some Uppercase letter blocks scaled down to 50%. When scaling down FPP patterns like this, remember to manually bump the seam allowance around your exterior sides back up to 1/4 inch.
Fabrics
I used three fabrics for this zipper pouch. The exterior with the little frogs is by Heather Ross. The deep pink letters is a fabric by Libs Elliott. And the interior pink is by Lizzy House.
Reference
Purl Soho’s Quilted Zipper Pouch
