Transcription
If your zipper tabs always come out bulky, awkward, or just plain messy, this video is for you. I'm Jan How and welcome to my channel. If you're new here, I'm all about showing you all kinds of tips and tricks for your DIY projects to make them easier, less stressful, and I may even save you a little money.
In this quick tutorial, I'm going to show you a simple and quick method for zipper tab construction and placement that will help you avoid bulky corners and get a much cleaner finish. If you're looking for full zipper pouch tutorials, I do have a few on my channel and I will put the links in the description below. So, without any further chitchat, let's get started.
Let's first go over the materials and items that you'll need. You will need your zipper pouch panels, two of the outer fabric, and two of the lining. And I have these cut out. These are 9x7 panels. And I have lined the outer panel with interfacing if you want to. A zipper. Now, you can use zippers by the yard, which I really like to use. And if you want to use a package zipper like this, you can use that as well. fabric clips, a few pins, a pair of fabric scissors. This is a glue based glue that I really like to use, and I'll show you some time-saving tips with that. A zipper foot for your sewing machine. And I will also show you tips and tricks that you can sew without a zipper foot that I'm finding is really even better. You'll need a turning stick, some masking tape or painters tape, a ruler or a seam gauge, some kind of marking device. I like using this heat activated um pen for fabric, and a rotary cutter and ruler will come in handy, and of course, you're going to need your sewing machine. Seam ripper is nice to have on hand. Not that you're going to need it, but even the best of us sometimes will have to unpick a few stitches.
The first thing you'll do is prep your zipper panels and your zipper. For the zipper panels for a half inch zipper tab, I'm going to measure a half inch from the side edges and mark it. I'm also going to do that with the lining fabric. Now, you're going to want the zipper to be 1 in shorter than your panel piece. So, this panel piece is 9 in. I'm going to cut my zipper to 8 in. If I were using this type of zipper, I would cut that tab there off. And then I would measure from there. If you're using zipper by the yard, before you cut and measure the other side, you'll want to apply the zipper pull. So, I'm going to pull that apart a bit. Now, you can use a zipper pull applicator like this, like I've shown you before, or you can just try to do it by hand, which is still very doable. And as you can see, as I when I've cut that, it starts to fray really quickly. So, another tip is I use a lighter just to burn off those edges and it will go through the zipper pull much easier. And I have more detail instructions on how to do this on my other tutorials.
Once you have your zipper pull on, we want to square off those edges. You can see how they're kind of off. And to do that, I like to take a piece of painters tape, line your zipper up with the line on your rotary cutter mat, and I'm going to square off that edge. In most of your pattern instructions, you'll be told to cut the zipper 1 in shorter than your panel piece. But I have a trick that I have found that really helps just tweak this process and make it make the tabs fit just perfect is to cut the zipper just under the called amount. So, I need to cut my zipper to 8 in. So, I'm going to trim that down just a little bit shorter.
Now we're ready to apply the zipper tabs. So I have cut out my zipper tab fabric 2 in x 5 in and I'm going to place it right side facing up. I'm going to place my zipper right side facing down. Then I'll take the other end of the zipper, fold it around so it makes a little loop like this and bring my edges of the zipper to the edges of the fabric again and clip that in place. We'll take it to the sewing machine and sew our half inch seam allowance over the tabs.
Now for your sewing machine setup, I'm just using a straight stitch. I'm using a universal size 90 needle. It's hard to see that 1/2 inch line and nowhere to sew. So, of course, I'm going to get my painters tape out again and I'm going to find the half inch mark on my sewing machine. You want to back stitch at the beginning and the edge of the zipper. And you just continue to sew. Cut the tabs into two pieces. Place the right zipper right side facing up. And give it a good that edge a good press. Flip it over. Fold this side edge up against the zipper edge. And then we're going to fold that over the zipper. Now, as you can see, it's not quite to the the stitching line, and that's what you want. And clip it in place. And now you can clip off that extra. And to keep that in place without sewing, cuz we want to eliminate as much sewing as we can and bulk, I'm going to apply just a little bit of this glue based it. You can just use a glue stick. A little dot there. A little dot there. A little dot there. And then I'm going to fold over. Zap it with the iron.
I'm going to apply just a little bead of glue along the top edge of my panel. zipper right side facing down. Aligning our half inch marks and take your lining piece, place it right side facing down. And I'm going to put another bit of glue there. You don't need to use very much. And there you have your zipper pouch sandwich with the lining, the zipper, and the outer fabric. We're going to take it to the sewing machine and sew down along the edge there using a quarter inch seam allowance.
Now, you can put on your zipper foot, but I have found that using my regular foot and adjusting the needle to the left is much easier and it stabilizes the fabric a lot better. Most machines you'll be able to adjust the needle position. Now on this machine, I will go to the stitch and I'm going to edit the stitch and see where it says left right shift. I'm going to shift it to the left as far as I can and then check and see where that is. That function is going to be different on each machine. On my old basic FA machine has a little dial that I can move the needle left or right. So I'm going to move that all the way to the left. You can see how that shifts the needle position, which comes in handy for a lot of things really. So, using my regular presser foot on my machine, I'm going to bring the presser foot down so the edge of the presser foot is along the teeth. And you can feel that ridge and that will just help you guide it. to make sure that it's the needle is going to come down where we want it. I'm going to turn the hand wheel of my sewing machine towards me a few stitches and take a look at where that stitch is coming down. Just going to take a few stitches cuz each machine is going to be different. And that looks just about right. So, I'm going to leave it there at that setting.
Now, when you get to the zipper pull, it's a little bulky and it will shift the stitch. So, lift up your presser foot with your needle down, spread your fabric apart, and grab that zipper pull and pull it out of the way. Now, if you're more comfortable using a zipper foot, do that.
So, now we're going to apply the other side. Let's go ahead and bring the right side facing up. I have applied a cute label. If you want to do that, you'll want to have that on before we do this part. I'm going to bring the two sides open like this and give it a good pressing. Pulling out the lining and getting that edge pressed really well. Now, we're going to top stitch around the zipper. I'm going to start right here. And I'm not going to top stitch on the folded area of the tab. Just going to go all around right here. 1/8 of an inch. And one thing I love about not using a zipper foot is I don't have to keep putting it taking it on and taking it off for the project. Now, when you're top stitching, I like to hold the top thread so you don't get that bird nesting on top. So, I have that little crack on my presser foot right there that I'd like to line up and guide me on the fold of that fabric. So, I'll put my presser foot down where I'm going to start. with that edge lined up where I want to. And I would like my needle to come a little bit more to the right. Bring that thread underneath and hold it. And you can also increase the stitch length to a three for the top stitching. It will give it a a more finished look. Just back stitch one using that guide along the edge of my presser foot there. And so moving that zipper pull when you need to pouch.
I'm going to tell you about the most important probably tip of making a zipper tab and a zipper pouch is this point right here. A lot of the patterns and instructions will have you sew a 1/2 inch seam allowance on your bag. Well, if you sew a 1/2 in seam allowance, that means when you're coming to this part of the tab, when you're sewing the pieces together, most likely you are going to sew into the tab, and you don't want to do that. So, what I like to do so you have plenty of room and it still looks really nice and it doesn't affect the function of the bag is to sew a 3/8 inch seam allowance instead of the 1/2 in.
Now, to do that, you want to set up your machine before you start sewing. So, I have my 1/2 in tape there, but I don't want to use that because if I use that, look, I am going to sew into that tab a little bit and it and it is ends up bulky. it ends up. That's where you get all the bunching up happening. So, I'm not going to use this 1/2 in seam allowance. I'm going to use the edge of your presser foot because usually that is a 3/8 in seam allowance. But we're going to double check that. And how you do that is I'm going to bring my presser foot down and then I'll bring my needle down and see where that is showing up. I'm going to bring it over here a little bit so I can see that a little better. And I think I still could go a little to the left with my needle. Just a bit. So, I think that's good. Once you have that in place, now you can make sure that your zipper tab and your top piece are lined up and pin it in place and you're ready to roll.
So, this is another tip is to fold and glue down the seam allowance towards the outer fabric. Now, this we didn't use a very big seam allowance. And sometimes if you're using your zipper foot or you want that seam allowance to be a little bigger, it's a a bigger deal, but I'm just going to do that and show you how that will help. So, I'm going to glue that down on both sides. Don't need very much. Just see I'm gluing putting a little dab of glue there so I can glue that down so it's not going to get in my way when I'm sewing the pieces together which tends to be really problematic.
Now you can bring your right sides of your lining piece together. You want the zipper tab to be pushed towards the lining. So the bend of the zipper tab goes this way towards the lining. And then you'll line you're going to line up. You're going to pinch that together and line up the edges there. I use pins. I don't trust clips because they can shift and move and you want this precise. So, I'm going to put a pin right there on both sides. You can you do your box corners on the bottom. You can do whatever kind of bottom you want and whatever method that you want to do on your zipper. And I'm going to start just below that back stitching, of course. And again here you can use your zipper foot if you prefer, but I find it's just easier to leave it on. You're going to go slow. And when you're sewing over this bulky thing, see how the back of the presser foot is going down and the front is tilting up? You can use your hump jumper tool. I'm going to put that underneath there. Bring my presser foot down and continue sewing. That just helps the presser foot and the feed dogs bring the fabric evenly through.
So, I've sewn all the round. I've made my box corners. And now I'm going to trim down the seam allowance to about a quart of an inch. You can do all the way around or most importantly just around that zipper.
Now, let's turn it right side facing out through that hole I left in the bottom of my lining. And we'll see how we did. Before we do anymore, I'm going to sew that that lining closed. I'm kind of a funny gal, but I don't like to just sew with the sewing machine. You have that little bump at the bottom of your bag and that stitching. I am going to sew that by hand, but I'll do that later. Let me show you what it will look like. Your zipper tabs. Look at that. Pretty nice. Look at the nice edges. Flat, not bulky, not gathered up. I think that's a thumbs up.
So, there you have it. clean, finished, professional looking zipper tabs. And it wasn't that hard. I hope you found these tips helpful and this makes your zipper pouch making a lot simpler and more enjoyable. Zipper pouches are so fun to make. If you want to check out my other zipper pouch tutorials, I'll leave a link in the description below. Leave a comment if you have concerns or questions. If you like my content, give it a thumbs up, share it with your friends, and subscribe to my channel if you haven't already. If you want to find other DIY projects and tips, check out my website, you make its simple.com, where you'll find all kinds of DIY projects in the sewing room, crafting, and in your home. Thanks so much for watching. Have a wonderful day, and have fun sewing. We'll see you in the next tutorial.