Zippered Pouch & a New Fabric Swap

This embroidered strip piece was done a few months ago but was set aside since I wasn't ready to tackle the zipper yet at the time.     The embroidering idea came from Lu Summer's blog, where she shared a new idea on how to use her Summerville fabric collection back then.



I've used the Town print in coal and stitched the prints using Anchor Marlitt embroidery threads.   I love the luscious colours and the high luster of the rayon gives a silk look finish.   The Marlitt embroidery thread is a beautiful, 4 strandable thread but little did I know that it's also slippery to work with!   With each stitch I made, it had a tendency to want to slip back the way it came, which often let to loose, unsightly stitches.   I've pulled a little more firmly and that caused the fabric to pull...  if there's a good method to working with rayon thread, please share, I'd love to know!




front of pouch















back of pouch

I've appliqued these 1" hexies for the back and used medium weight interfacing to add body to the linen fabric.



I've added a pocket strip to the lining fabric to hold my notions / sewing kit - easier to look for them since the pouch is deep.

Notice the cube pincushion on my zipper pull?   Well... while I was catching up on my blog reading a few days ago,  Lucy of Charm About You shared two tutorials during her turn on the Let's Get Acquinted Blog Hop hosted by Beth at Plum and June.   This cute pincushion using English Paper Piecing method was one of it.   I've copied her cool idea adding the 1 1/2" finished cube to the zip!

 

The finished project pouch measures at 10" width x 11 1/2" height - a great size to accommodate an 8" embroidery hoop.   This is my first zipper pouch project and for the most part it was pretty easy.   All in all, eventhough the front and back pieces wasn't pieced closely to the zipper, I am pleased with the way it turned out.   I still need to master the zipper technique though. 

Just to share with you about this fun swap Making Rebecca Lynne is doing that I signed up for yesterday.   It's a Low Volume Swap where each participant buys two designer fabrics ( large ratio of white or neutral colour ), one yard each and cut them into 5" squares, mail them to her and we will receive 112 charm squares of different fabrics in return.   We're supposed to post our fabric picks on the Low Volume flickr group so that there are no duplicates.   It will be exciting to see what everyone else picked and what I'm going to be getting!   I've contacted Rebecca with regards to shipping the fabrics directly from the online store to her.   She was more than happy to accommodate and even offered to have the fabrics cut out for me!   How sweet is that!   Now on to some fabric shopping...


Hope you'll have a lovely weekend! 


I'll be linking up with Katie's Handmade Parade at There and Back