DIY make-up bag sewing tutorial - beginner sewing project - quilted pouch sew along

You have probably seen the viral DIY quilted makeup pouches, zipper boxy pouches and I'm so in love with them and I made a bunch so I decided to film a tutorial and show you how I made them. And if you're new here hi I'm Ella and the face behind Sewing Amore and I'm going to show you how to make them. You don't need any pattern or something you can just follow along. The first thing we're gonna do is obviously cutting out the squares. We're gonna need two squares, one for inside and one for outside. You can use the same fabric or completely different. I decided for this red gingham and the red dots for the inside and the square is going to be around 32 centimeters wide and 50 centimeters long. So here I'm cutting out both fabrics and then also from the outside fabric you can of course also use any other fabric. I'm going to cut a little square. A little square we're gonna leave for later but it's definitely optional and you can make it as big as you want. Then we're gonna use this fluffy material. I actually don't know what the name is but it's often used for quilting or pouches or that sort of thing and I've cut it out a little bit bigger just in case more mistake happens or it just slides around while quilting and it's just better to have it a little bit bigger. Now is the quilting part and you can actually quilt it however you want. You can make like some squares or lines or vertical, horizontal, however you want it. I decided to make vertical lines as you see here. I made them with a distance of around four centimeters and because the chalk that I used did not really work on this fabric, I couldn't see it at all, I just decided to pin it. So I pinned the distances and I just did it for the entire piece. Now we're gonna put the fabric onto the quilting fluffy fabric. We're just gonna quilt it on top. You could secure the two layers to each other with like a safety pin or just normal pins or anything but I didn't feel like it's needed because it's quite simple. And then I just sew the straight lines. Once you're done quilting with the distances or shapes and forms you like, or in my case just the straight lines, we cut off the extra fluff so it's all aligned and same measurements. And now the actual tutorial starts. So we're gonna need a zipper. My zipper is 25 centimeters long and you can use an invisible zipper. I did it before and it's working okay but I think with a normal zipper it's a little bit better. So we're putting the right side of the zipper onto the right side of the fabric so the outer edges align as you can see it in the video. And we're gonna leave this hard plastic thingy which is stopping the zipper around a centimeter away from the end of the fabric. And then we're just gonna sew it. And I start by having the zipper open and sewing down but then at some point you will need to close the zipper otherwise you cannot sew where this zipper plastic thing is. And then you put the foot down and just keep on sewing. Now of course you also do it for the other side so you align the other right side edge to the right side fabric, just the outer edges to each other and you can see that everything is nice and aligned. You're going to start here now with the zipper closed and you're going to sew it and then at some point you will need to again open the presser foot, in best case leave the needle in so you don't lose where you are, and open the zipper and then you can sew again with the open zipper to the end. Once you're done with that we're gonna use the inside fabric and we're gonna put the right side onto the wrong side of the zipper how I do it in the video. This is, I would say, the most complicated part. So you will align it like this and of course you can always also pin it in place, I usually don't. And then of course we again have this zipper problem, so we're going to sew first with the open zipper and here you cannot just open the presser foot unfortunately. So at some point when the zipper, the plastic zipper thingy is going to be a disturbance I just stop sewing. So I just leave the stitch here and then I'm going to carefully zip the bag closed and then sew again this last little part. Once that's done we of course need to do the other side again. So we're going to fold it over like this and again attach the right side of the inside fabric to the wrong side of the other zipper edge and we're going to sew here again. First this time with a closed zipper and I'm just sewing a little bit and then stopping to sew and opening the zipper and then continuing sewing the rest with the open zipper. Now that we have both fabrics attached to the zipper I like put my hands in it and put it all in place and make a little tube and this is optional but I think it looks optical very nice. So we're going to sew a little bit next to the zipper so that the fabrics stay in place and don't get too puffy around the zipper. So now the video quality is sadly not so good but you're just going to sew very close to the zipper and make sure that you pull both fabrics a little bit away from the zipper so it doesn't get stuck or bulpy or yeah just make sure to stretch it sometimes away and here you can see it a little bit better from close up and then also because the zipper is going to be at some point in the way I'm stopping a little bit before closing the zipper and then sewing this last edge again. I try to do it as clean as possible because it's going to be top stitching so it's going to be seen so try to do it with the same seam allowance, the same distance, the same stitch length so it just looks clean and nice. And then we're going to fold the pouch with the right side so the outsides are going to be seen together and the zipper is going to be looking upwards towards us and in the middle and we're just going to pin or clip. I'm using those clips they work great with such things and we're going to sew the sides but before we do that we will have this little piece of fabric that we left and we're going to sew it together now. So we're going to fold both edges to the middle and fold once again that's how you make bias binding and we're just going to sew there quickly. You can make it as long as you want or as wide as you want and where the zipper is, the zipper plastic thingy, we're going to fold it in half and we're going to place it right in the middle by the pouch so the right sides are together and I'm closing the pouch, clipping it together and I'm going to sew there. And where the zipper plastic thing is, I'm going to sew carefully because the needle can break if it sews onto the zipper start or end. And then of course I'm going to do it with the other side. Again, careful, I often do it with the hand and then I'm going to cut the edges a little bit cleaner and maybe there's also some zipper end sticking out so I'm going to cut this off. Now we need two little stripes that are the length of the edge, the raw edges that we have and five centimeters wide. And we're going to put the right side, the edges align and we're going to sew here. And I sew from the other side so I can see the stitch because we're going to sew on the stitch. I'm going to sew there and then fold it open like this and on the other side I'm going to fold the edge to the middle and then once again so there's not going to be any raw edge to see. I'm going to fold it and I'm going to clip it with the pin and at the beginning and the end I'm also going to fold it to the middle once and then fold it over the stitch so in the end you're not going to see the stitch. This part can be a little bit difficult but with practice it definitely gets better and just try to sew very slow and carefully. Again I sew very slow and really really carefully because I've broken needles before by sewing over a zipper which I'm not proud of but it happens. And then it should look like this and believe me my first try was not as clean and beautiful like this one. And of course I also did it on the other side. It's important that you have the zipper a little bit open because otherwise you cannot open the pouch inside out. So now we need to sew all four edges and we're going to fold the pouch as you saw here and we put this side edge that we have on the middle looking towards us. You can try around a little bit and I'm marking here around six centimeter distance. You can make it also as wide as you want. You can try out some things and we're just going to sew there and we're going to do this with all four sides of course. And this is what's going to make our pouch boxy. So after I've sewn all four edges I'm going to turn it inside out just to check if I like it before continuing because now in this step you can see if you want it maybe to be a little bit flatter or taller or yeah. But if you're you can cut off those edges and leave around one centimeter seam allowance. Now we need the inside fabric again and we're gonna cut out again five centimeter wide and the length of this little edge plus around one two centimeters on each side extra because we need we're gonna need to fold it over. So we're gonna align again right side to right side. I'm gonna sew there on the stitch and now we're gonna fold it over like this so there's no raw edges anywhere. We're gonna fold it all nicely in and of course also on the other side front and back. And then we're also gonna do in the middle folding to the middle and once again over and we're gonna sew there and this is again a little bit tricky but just try to sew carefully and slow. And once you've done this with all four sides you are done with your bag. You can pull it inside out and put your finger in all the edges so it's all perfect. And this is your cute pouch and I decided to add my little sewing amoeba label to it. So I replaced it where I wanted it and then I stitched and there you have it. I really hope you liked the tutorial.