The Easy Way To Sew a Zipper Pocket to Any Bag

Have you ever wanted to make a bag or something that called for a zipper pocket and you're thinking, how in the world do you do that? That looks way too complicated for me. I'm Jan Howell and welcome back to my channel where I show you tips and tricks to make all your sewing projects, your DIY projects, a little easier and less frustrating. Now I used to think years ago, I remember thinking, how do you put in a zipper pocket? There's so many layers. There are too many things to consider how that was even done. And so I avoided those projects that had a zipper pocket, but really they are not hard at all. And once you start putting zippers into bags and things, you are going to love putting zippers in, including a zipper pocket. This will be a quick and simple tutorial and when you're finished watching, you'll be confident in putting a zipper pocket in any of your projects. I'm going to show you on this crossbody bag how to apply a zipper pocket. Now you can put a zipper pocket inside the bag. You can put a zipper pocket on the outside. You could even put a zipper pocket on an item of clothing or something. Let's get started. I have already applied the fusible fleece to my pocket and to my lining piece of my bag. I have cut a zipper by the yard to eight inches and I have a zipper pull ready to put on. If you're using a regular zipper that you buy from the store, a package zipper, you will buy a seven inch zipper and it will actually be eight inches in length. The first thing that we'll do is mark our zipper box. There are several different ways that you can do that. You can just simply use a ruler and measure down and I'll show you a few ways that you can do that. Or you can buy templates that are available, but some of them do cost a lot of money. And if you don't want to spend the money on a template, you can simply make your own. And I will be going over that in another tutorial. We need to mark the center points of our lining piece and our pocket piece. So I'm just going to fold that in half, the top edge, and take a pen and just make a little line there. And do that also with your bag lining piece. If you don't have a template, you can just simply measure down one and a half inches and make a line. And then you'll measure down two inches and mark a line at that center point. Our box needs to be seven inches and we want it centered, so I'm going to measure three and a half inches from that center point. Now if you were using this template, all you need to do is simply find your halfway points right there. We're using the one and a half inch mark and simply trace around that square. So that's pretty nice. Now some of those templates have a line that goes down the center, a cutting line, but that's real simple to do. All you need to do is make another line a quarter inch from that top line. And I'm going to come in a quarter inch from the side edges there. And you can even just eyeball this. Sometimes you really don't even need to draw this line. Then I'm going to make a little triangle cut there, just showing where we need to cut and clip that after we sew. So now I'm going to take the pocket, place it on top of your lining, your bag liner, and this is where this two inch edge of this template will come in handy. I'm going to line up our center points and we need to measure two inches down from the pocket or the bag lining. And then I'm going to pin that in place. And then you'll just take it to the sewing machine. We're going to sew around that box. I brought my presser foot down. I'm using just a regular stitch, two and a half inches in length. And to make sure that my needle is coming down on the line, I'm going to turn the handwheel on my sewing machine so it brings down the needle so I can tell if that needle is where it needs to be. I'm going to back stitch. When you get down to the corner, leave your needle down, lift up your presser foot and pivot. And when you get back to where you started, just back stitch. Now to cut out that line, a way to get that started is to fold the piece in half. And on this folded edge, just make a little clip in the fabric. Just enough so that you can get your scissors in there. You could also use a seam ripper if you wanted to. And we're going to cut along that center line. And cut it out to the corner, making sure not to cut into the seam. And then you're just simply going to slide the pocket fabric through the hole and flip it to the other side. And you'll notice it kind of bunches up on those side seams. But no worries, that will press out and flatten out. Give that a good press. And flip it back onto the other side. And this is a trick that really helps keep the zipper in place before we sew it. Now you could always just pin this in place if you wanted to, but I find this trick is very helpful. But before we do that, if you haven't put your zipper pull on your zipper, you can do that now. Now I have a tutorial and my other bag tutorials where I show you more in depth of how to do this, but I'll just simply refresh if you haven't. These little gadgets are handy. There's also a purple gadget that I have. You'll take the rounded edge of the zipper pull, put the zipper in with that facing up. And this is the back side of the zipper. So I want to bring the back side of the zipper. Pull it apart and just put it down in. All right, now that is ready. I'm going to apply just a small bead of glue around the edge of that box. You can use even a glue stick if you want. But I really like this fabric glue. Glue based it and it does wash out and it doesn't gum up your needle. You want the zipper pull to be on the right side and so we're going to insert that, center it, and I like to flip it over on the other side so I can manipulate it a little bit more. And then use your iron to set the glue. I'm going to go to the sewing machine and top stitch all the way around. I'm going to switch out my presser foot to my zipper foot that looks like this. And we're going to ride the edge of the zipper foot along the edge of the zipper teeth. Now if you need to adjust the needle to the left or right, do that now. And when I'm top stitching, I like to use a little bit longer stitch so I'm going to change that to a 3.0 instead of a 2.5. And to keep that thread from bird nesting on the top or the bottom, I'm going to hold that thread for the first couple stitches. Leave your needle down, lift up your presser foot, and then slide your zipper down if it's in the way. I'm going to fold the pocket right sides together in half, line up the top edge and the side edges, and clip it in place. And we're going to sew around the three edges. We're not going to sew along the bottom fold. So how you do that, you'll just flip the top edge over, start at that folded edge, and sew around. I'm going to change my presser foot back to the regular foot. I'm going to change my stitch back to a 2.5 in length, and just sew a 3.8 inch seam allowance. That is all there is to it. Look at that cute lining, ready to put in a bag. So putting in a zipper pocket wasn't that bad, was it? Look how cute this turned out, and I can't wait to make this crossbody bag using this as the outer fabric and this as my lining. Let me know in the comments below if you're interested in learning how to make a crossbody bag. Thanks so much for watching. If you haven't hit that subscribe button yet, make sure you do that. Click on the bell so you can be notified when I put new videos up. And if you want to check out my other DIY projects, tutorials, and patterns, you can find those on my website, YouMakeItSimple.com. Have a wonderful day, have fun sewing, and we'll see you in the next tutorial.