Tag Archives: open wide zippered pouch

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In May, I took a virtual walking foot quilting class with Jacquie Gering with my local guild. Her class was a wonderful variety of walking foot skills. We filled 5 panels with quilting during the 6 hour class.

And... right at the beginning of the class she talked about open toe walking feet. Did you know that a walking foot can have an open toe!? I did not. Our class started at 9am that morning, and when the local sewing machine shop opened at 10am, I called up and asked if they had an open toe walking foot that would fit my 1982 Viking. I sent my husband to pick it up, and before noon it was installed. Let me tell you... game changer!

The walking foot on the left is the one I've been using for... over a decade. And the one on the right is my new, open toe walking foot. I can actually see where I'm sewing now! This allowed me to be really good at connecting points (see below).

Here are two of the panels we made in class. I had a couple quilt sandwiches left over from a previous quilting class, but for these two 12" x 18" panels I chose a least favorite solid color for the top and a print I was not likely to use in a quilt for the backing fabric. At the end of class, I had five quilted panels. I decided that my 18" x 18" panels would be great cushion covers (coming soon). Then I decided that these two with the printed backings could be turned into zipper pouches with the print side out.

I love the Open Wide Zippered Pouch by Noodlehead. I've made it many, many times. (This is one of my favorites.) It's so versatile. Previously, I have used fusible fleece on the outer panel to give it some structure and a quilted look. This is the first time I used a three-layer quilted panel for the outer portion of the bag. It's a lot more thickness, but it worked out well, with one minor adjustment.

I chose a coordinating fabric that isn't likely to make it into a quilt anytime soon for my lining fabric. Here's a peek. I'm pleased that I had a zipper that matched my outer fabric.

The Open Wide Zippered Pouch stands up on its own and... opens wide when unzipped. You may notice that my directional fabric is cut two different ways inside. We could call it a design element. Or a mistake. But really, it was the only way to cut the two panels out of the remnant of this print. I'm embracing the concept that "done is better than perfect" these days.

While the quilting is subtle on this one, the organic, overlapping curves is a great motif. It's easy to use in a lot of applications, both in walking foot and in free motion. My daughter helped me quilt a couple of the lines.

For my second pouch, my direction fabric ran the wrong way to cut panels large enough for another Open Wide Zippered Pouch, so instead I constructed this one in flat, rectangular panels. I love that the quilting is really a feature on this one. It also has a handbag feel to it with this shape. My panels were cut about 6" x 12".

I used the same basic construction (with the same adjustment) as the Open Wide Zippered Pouch and omitted the step to box the corners. I chose to use a remnant of my quilted panel to make the tab on the zipper. Since this was many layers of fabric (and batting!) I hand stitched the tab in place. It was way too bulky to get under the foot of my machine.

And for the one adjustment that I made. Since the bulk of the doubled layer of the quilted outer panel would have made topstitching around the top of the bag difficult, I simply tacked at the seams. In the photo above you can see my brown tack stitch (a simple zig zag stitch in place with the feed dogs down) about 1/4" below the top edge. I figure this is enough to keep the lining from popping up and getting in the way of the zipper.

I love the delightful whimsy of the children on the fabric. It worked out well that I got a variety of kids on the two panels I cut. (Today I saw this adorable quilt block which featured fussy cutting of another color way of this print.)

These pouches are part of my 99 Days of WIPs (yesterday was day 30), which I'm posting about daily on Instagram. I'm focusing on projects started in classes in the last 5 1/2 years. (2016 was the first year I took quilt classes, after quilting for over a decade!)

While they aren't perfect in numerous little ways, they are lovely, and finished, and will someday make their way to a new home with a friend or family member. I'd love to hear about your favorite, faster-than-a-quilt, gifts to sew or make.

Thanks for visiting!

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First, a reminder to link up to my first monthly Show Me Something linkup... Show Me Something Purple! You can find all the details in that post, but in short, I'm inviting you to share 1-3 new or old finished projects that fit the monthly theme. While I'm writing this we already have 38 pleasing purple projects linked up so far this month. One week left to linkup your project. That's even plenty of time to start and finish something new. :-)

Now onto my latest purple finish...

The last holiday gift I made was this little Open Wide Zippered Pouch. No secret that this is one of my go to patterns, especially for gifts. This one I made for my 12-year-old niece. I optimized to use as much of my remnant of this fabric as possible, so this pouch landed halfway between a small and a medium.

I decided to quilt the outer panels. I'm excited about Aurifil's new Color Builders boxes. I've used these palettes as inspiration to find the gaps in my thread collection (mostly the lighter colors). Of course, I already have the purples. :-) I pulled the three Amalfi Purple colors in 50 wt. for consideration: Lilac (#2562), Violet (#2520), and Medium Purple (#2545). I chose the Violet for my quilting. I considered a crosshatch quilting motif, but opted for diagonal lines in just one direction. I marked my first line with blue tape on each panel so I'd be sewing at the same angle on both pieces and then I used the edge of my foot as a guide to sew parallel to these lines to fit the panel. I opted for irregular spacing. So forgiving!

Once I was done with the quilting I was super underwhelmed. I had chosen the purple that blended in perfectly with my fabric. So I decided to add more lines of quilting in Lilac and Medium Purple. I think that while subtle, the three different thread colors added a dynamic quality to the quilting.

I lined the bag in a white on white print. I like a light lining to be able to easily find things in a pouch or bag.

My niece loved it and immediately moved some of her art supplies into the pouch. :-)

 

Thank you for visiting. Be sure to hop over to Show Me Something Purple to linkup your projects and to check out the dozens of purple projects shared by others.

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Today was our holiday part at Bay Area Modern Quilting. There's an annual tradition of a gift swap among members. In 2017, I made this apron for Gerre. And last year I made a pair of fabric trays for Joelle. This year I was assigned to make for Mary, and she indicated that her favorite colors were purple and teal and that she'd like "anything." I knew immediately that it would be fun to create something for her and decided her "anything" would be a bag, making it a twofer as it fits the requirements for the November Travel Handmade Bag Making challenge for the Aurifil Artisans.

I started with a fabric pull, including a zipper that coordinated. I spent a fair amount of time pursuing bag patterns and considering what I'd make. In the end, I settled on the Noodlehead Open Wide Zippered Pouch in size large. There are quite a variety of zipper pouch tutorials out there, but I just love this one so much! It's a great pattern, can be made with just one or two exterior fabrics, or tricked out with piecing or appliqué. Unlimited options!

I like making this size bag with fusible fleece on the exterior panels, but I didn't want to make a run to the store. Instead, I used a remnant of Quilters Dream Deluxe batting from this quilt. This thicker loft batting gave the bag great structure. Since I was quilting with batting, I made my panels a little oversized and trimmed down to size after quilting.

I had considered piecing the exterior panels, but decided on a split panel with the floral on the top and the teal Christa Watson fabric on the bottom. However, the floral was just a couple inches too narrow for this so I was able to use the polka dot to fill in. I ended up trimming off the floral size to leave a better ratio of the polka dots instead of just 1-2" per panel.

One my exterior panels were pieced I auditioned thread colors for quilting. I like having a variety to choose from.

I settled on these three: Light Lilac (#2510), Violet (#2520), and Dark Turquoise (#4182). I love that quilting with 50wt doesn't compete with the pattern on the fabric.

I chose three different motifs for the quilting. Here's a view from the back.

I used my walking foot for the organic, wavy lines in the teal sections, tried out a new-to-me motif from Leah Day's 365 FMQ Designs in the polka dot sections, and used one of my favorite motifs, spirals, for the floral sections.  I didn't have backing fabric on my quilt "sandwich" since the lining would cover the back of this quilted panel.

After quilting, I appliquéd the square of polka dot fabric to the front panel.

Then I chose a lining fabric, stitched it all together, added the tab of fabric on the end of the zipper.

The gift exchange is so fun every December. People made a variety of delightful gifts -- coasters, table runners, aprons, placemats, bags! Tomorrow I'll show you what I received. :-)

I'm participating in the 31 Day Blog Writing Challenge with Cheryl of muppin.com.