Patchwork Wristlet Pouch Tutorial ~ Free-Tutorial.net

This wristlet, measuring approximately 6 3/4" x 5", has some fun features including three inside pockets for cards and a chap stick and a little loop outside the pouch that holds a key chain. I have been making tons of these pouches just because this project is simple, easy, quick, fun, and quite addictive, so I hope you enjoy this tutorial.

We start off with twenty four 2 1/4" squares. (Once again, seam allowance of 1/4" is included unless otherwise noted.) Twelve of them will be one side, and the other twelve go to the back side.

We now take the twelve squares that come to one side of the pouch. Then we'll make patchwork strips of columns.

Fun ;)

After you have four strips, it's time to press.

Pressing seam allowances like this will make your finished patchwork piece less bulky and it helps to ensure that each corner of a square piece matches with corners of other squares around it.

We'll sew them together.

Then press seams open! Yay just like you did for the fabric basket and the patchwork drawstring bag! I sure love square patches :D

After repeating the same process with the rest of twelve squares, we have two patchwork panels.

Then we'll fuse each of them onto a piece of medium to heavy weight batting. I like to use quilting spray for this process rather than using fusible batting.

The quilting style here is totally up to you. Zig-Zag stitching is fun and quick, but what I've been doing is this; quilting very close to both sides of each seam, and the short edges..

like that.

Then we cut off the excess. Fun part ;)

Now let's move onto making a handle. We need two strips; one linen piece and one cotton piece. If you'd rather use cotton for both two strips, I recommend that you use interfacing. (Just like how the handles for the lunch bag are made.)

Once again, this is just like making handles for the lunch bag and the fabric basket.

Folding each long edge toward the middle..

Then top-stitching both long edges.

If you want to attach a loop for your pouch, cut out one rectangle piece measuring 1" x 4".

Just like the handle, we fold and press this piece like this and..

top-stitch both long edges.

We will now machine-baste the handle and the loop you made onto one of the patchwork panel close to the top right corner like this.

Now let's work on the lining. We need two pieces for the lining and one piece for three pockets.

Take the pocket piece, fold it in half with right side together, and sew the one long edge together.

So your pocket looks like this. Not so cute, so let's turn it inside out.

And press. That's much better :D

Now take a ruler and one of the lining pieces to attach a pocket onto. I like to leave about 1 1/4" above the pocket.

Then sew the bottom edge of the pocket

so it looks like this now.

Using a water soluble pen, draw these lines. The two pockets on the left are going to be for your cards and one on the right is for your chap stick, if you like to carry one.

In this image, there is no sewing done at the short edges of the pockets, but I recommend you sew very close to those edges just so that you'll deal with less pins later.

Let's now attach a 7" zipper. I know that dealing with a zipper is a bit intimidating for a beginner, (I used to be terrified at this too) but it is actually not that hard. Trust me. After attaching a zipper in several different ways, I found this way the easiest, so if you are a beginner, I hope you'll follow this step-by-step instruction ;)

So here, I make sure that there is more than 1/4" from the left edge of the lining piece to the metal part of the zipper. This way, we can avoid sewing onto the metal, which will break your needle instantaneously. (Don't ask me how many needles I have broken this way, lol)

Remember to use a zipper foot that probably came with your sewing machine that should look like this one in the image above. With a zipper foot, start sewing from the end of the zipper. Here, your zipper is completely closed.

Stop, once you sewed it half-way and lift up your zipper foot.

And bring the zipper-head to the very end, lift down the foot again, and keep sewing. I've found that it is very important to always have the zipper-head very far from where I am sewing. It is quite difficult to keep stitching straight if a zipper-head is near the foot. I do this moving-zipper-head for every single piece I attach to a zipper.

With the zipper completely closed, we'll attach another lining piece onto the zipper. This time, we can't really see a zipper, but as long as you can make sure that the piece is aligning with the zipper, it's totally fine. Oh and don't forget to move the zipper-head when you sewed it half-way just like you did for the other lining.

When both lining pieces are attached to the zipper, it looks like this. Nice :)

Take a patchwork piece that has a handle and a loop attached. We are sewing this onto the zipper now.

Like that.

This is how it should look like. Now we will attach the other patchwork piece.

This time, it's a little different, because we start off with the zipper completely open. Then when we come to half-way, we close up the zipper to keep sewing.

After all the pieces are attached, it should look like this.

This is optional, but you might want to sew the top of the lining just to make sure it won't be too puffy and in your way when you open the pouch. Here we want to make sure that in this process, we don't have our patchwork panel underneath the lining piece being sewn.

With right sides together, pin both patchwork panels together and do the same for the lining. Make sure to fold your handle inside and to have your zipper about 80% open. Sew the dotted line, with at least 2.5" opening at the bottom of the lining.