I Finally Learned How to Sew Zippers (and I Have the Zippered Bags to Prove It!)

 Look who finally taught herself a very basic sewing skill after nearly eighteen years of sewing!

Looking for some stocking stuffers that I could DIY for Matt and the teenagers, I hit upon some of the numerous tutorials for zippered bags that I've got Pinned. I've saved so many tutorials for bags, pouches, and cases of all kinds, and yet I rarely made any, because I was still scared of zippers!

Well, Friends, this was my year, and this was the tutorial that I used. I followed it even when I couldn't quite work out what it was leading up to, and behold! When I was finished, I had an only slightly wonky zippered pouch to show for it!

And then I made another, and it was less wonky.

And then another.

And then I just went ahead and cut out one for almost every single zipper that I've got in my stash. I have had those zippers for... so long, and although they were one hundred percent handed down to me from somewhere or another, I no longer remember ever remotely where they're from. 

Some of them were at least fifty years old, though, and still in their original packaging! I hadn't realized until reading that tutorial that cutting a stash zipper to the correct size was as easy as this--

--and this!

And look how much happier all those vintage zippers are to be in their new homes!

I also learned, for the first time, exactly how to use my zipper foot, and I figured out exactly how to handle that zipper pull. The trick to getting it past your needle is to raise the needle as high as you can while still keeping it in the fabric, and then raise your presser foot, too. The zipper pull will zip right by!

I managed to fussy cut the very last Nutcracker Prince and Mouse King battle scene from the fat quarter that I bought from Spoonflower and make Syd a zippered pouch to keep her masks safe in her ballet bag:

I used stash fabric for the rest. I hid these three away for Christmas stockings (can you figure out who got which bag?)--

--and I made a few extras for general use:

I am so good with zippers now, you guys, you're not even going to believe it. I'm off to find something else VERY zipper-heavy to sew!