Craft Lightning: The Ultimate Zipper Pouch

Yay, it's time for another Craft Lightning post and the theme is Back to School!

Pouches are always fun but when it comes time for back to school I especially feel the need for many pouches for all my little office-y doodads. What's awesome about these in particular is that one takes only 15 minutes to make and HELLO it's zippers!

For the record these barely squeaked in under the Craft Lightning time limit of 15 minutes. But I figured if you decide to make your pouches with eight zippers, instead of ten, you would definitely make it in that time frame.

So here's what you need to make a pouch for yourself...ZIPPERS and a sewing machine. I used ten zippers per pouch, the length is completely up to you but I would recommend a length greater than nine inches.

1. Start off by lining out your zippers in the order you'd like them.  I recommend having them go head to tail. Using a zig-zag stitch begin sewing together the zippers two at a time. 

2. As you can see in the second picture, to save time I didn't use pins and I went straight from one set of zippers onto the next set of two. From there I sewed the pairs into groups of four, and so on, until they were one piece. 

3. Here's the tricky part, you need to sew the first and last zippers together to create a kind of loop. Basically I unzipped one of the zippers and started sewing (see third image) as far as I could (see the forth image). 

4. Next up, flip it inside out, and unzip the zippers about 3 inches-this will keep you from accidentally sewing the zipper pull tab. Fold it flat and get ready to sew both ends closed to create the pouch. Note: you can pin if you want to, personally I had better luck sewing slowly, and yes you will be sewing directly over all those zippers so make sure you are using a heavy duty needle! 

5. Unzip one of the zippers and flip the pouch right size out. Go ahead, take a moment to marvel at what you just made! Seriously, it is pretty awesome. 

Having all those opening and closing options made me want to super glue all but one of them shut. It would become a trick pouch. Yes, I now that's silly but shh, just let me have this moment. 

For more back to school projects be sure to check out these 30 projects, crafts, and organization tips and for more Craft Lightning projects click the box below!