Thought I’d take a crack at writing a tutorial for inserting a zippered pocket in a handmade bag. Until now, I’ve used the method shown in all the handbag-making books and home sewing patterns I have, as well as in all the incredibly helpful online tutorials I’ve found, including:

• SewPixie’s tutorial on Craftster
• U-handblog’s Sewing Zippers in Bags Tutorial

I’ve been perfectly happy with those techniques, but the result is that the zipper tape sits on top of the pocket fabric and is therefore visible if you peek inside to look…which most people probably never do. So, I changed the approach a bit so that instead of the visible zipper tape in the photo on the left, I get a hidden zipper tape as seen in the photo on the right. Yay!

I started thinking about it more when I saw the post over at Fashion Incubator for a Zippered Welt Pocket Tutorial. (Note: You’ll need to be an owner of Kathleen’s book in order to access the tutorial, but the book is well worth the investment if you’re planning to make a business out of designing and/or making sewn goods.) She’s got an approach to zipper insertion I hadn’t seen before in which she does this flipping inside-out trick with the zipper that would skip the step of laying the pocket fabric on top of the main fabric.

A little confused, but definitely intrigued, I planned to try it. But alas, the zippers that I needed to use were too short. Soooooo, here’s how I did it instead! Note: My material changes color because I snapped the photos across two different projects. Oops!

Materials:

• The piece of lining fabric that the zippered pocket will be on
• Zipper (mine is a 7-inch #3 sized zipper with metal teeth)
• Fabric for your pocket (mine is 9″ wide x 15.5″ high, for a finished pocket size of approximately 7″x7″)
• Strip of interfacing or contrasting fabric

Steps:

1) Center your interfacing or contrasting fabric over the spot where you want your pocket to be, right sides together. Draw a rectangle to mark the opening, and stitch along the border to reinforce the opening.

2) Cut a slit lengthwise down the middle of the rectangle, then cut two slits at 45-degree angles at each end

3) Push the interfacing through the slit you’ve made, and finger press it flat. The right-most photo is the view from the back.

4) Place the zipper along the bottom of your pocket fabric, wrong side of zipper to right side of fabric. You can baste the two pieces together to keep them in place. Center the zipper and pocket underneath the rectangular opening, and pin in place. The right-most photo shows the view from the back.

5) Using a zipper foot, stitch a straight seam along the bottom (or left, in these photos) of the rectangle. Backstitch to lock the seam at both ends.

6) Here comes the part where you get to bust out your origami skillz. Flip your material to the back and remove the pins. Fold the pocket fabric down and finger press (or iron) to flatten the fabric downwards, away from the zipper teeth. This is important because you don’t want the fabric to get stuck in the zipper. Now, fold the bottom of the pocket up so that the bottom seam now meets with the top of the upper half of the zipper tape. Flip your work around again, and pin in place.

7) Straight stitch around the 3 remaining sides of the rectangle, backstitching again to lock the seam at beginning and end.

8) Flip your work around again, stitch the left and right sides of the pocket together, and you’re done! My pocket has three seams along the top instead of just one. I had issues with my zipper foot. =[

Now you’ve got a zippered handbag pocket that looks just like the ones in store-bought bags – no zipper tape in sight!

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