Vinyl Pouches

Back in November, when there was sew-a-long for Aneela Hoey's Stitched Sewing Organisers book, I tried out a couple of her pouch patterns but got no further.  There were a couple of the other organisers in the book I fancied trying, so a few weeks ago I decided it was time to have a go at them.  As you can see above I tried the Two-in-one Pouch and the See It All Pouch.

My poor Two-in-one Pouch has a rather religious vinyl middle - hol(e)y - as I had problems stitching the vinyl and it all went wonky had to be redone.  By the time the centre run of stitching is done, lots of other parts have already been stitched (like the zipper enclosures) and since the pouch is just for me, I was too lazy to want to start afresh with an unspoilt piece of vinyl.  Next time I will remember that stitching the vinyl with paper or tissue paper over the top of it works so much better ;-)  Actually, I wish I'd just thought at the time to add a folded strip of fabric down the centre to cover the holes I made.  Hindsight is surely a wonderful thing.

There was also a mishap with the positioning of my kam snap fastening and the two don't quite meet level.  It adds a bit of a tilt to the closure but I'll live with it.  Though it is still a mystery as to how it happened.  I've checked and double checked the pattern and my measuring but am still none the wiser as to why it should be 'off'.  I'm feeling very out of practice sewing little things and making so very many mistakes!!

Anyhow, the pouch will serve its purpose nicely as the holder of many things, no doubt, in spite of its shortcomings.  I kind of think that yummy coral fabric makes up for its little foibles!

When I tried the See-it-all pouch I had learnt my lesson and remembered to have paper between the sewing machine and the vinyl for easier stitching.  I had some pain getting a nice smooth turn on the biased binding strips that were used to cover the zips (yes, the straight bits).  All sorts of horrible puckering was going on, but many suggestions from IG friends and many, many trials later I got a better, though still not perfect, turn on the binding.  Oddly enough, I didn't have any such drama on the curved part of the binding - go figure!

So there you have it - two more pouches tried and finished.  The last one on my list is the Triple Pouch. There are very lengthy instructions for it and it looks a little scary but I'd still like to see if I can do it. Maybe I should start thinking about fabric options ...