Pencil Pouch + Some Fantastic Zippers

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This long, skinny tool bag/pencil pouch was a fun make and turned out really nice.

I didn’t use a pattern but there are sewing patterns out there for this style of zipper pouch. Here are some options on etsy.

This type of zipper pouch is easy to sew but you do have to bind the interior seams. This is pretty easy but it’s also not something most of us would choose to do if we could avoid it. Just wanted to point that out in case you are in the “oh, heck no!!!” camp about binding seams.

I’ve really been on a roll with zipper pouches lately and now I can’t stop looking for interesting zippers to buy! There are some great zippers available and this collection has some of my favorites.

Sewing with zippers has also reminded me there are two things about them I wanted to warn you about:

1. Metal teeth zippers might need be lubricated. If you are going to make things with these—and they do look amazing—get some zipper lubricant.

2. Zipper tape that you cut to size splits. Maybe there are brands that don’t do this but I’ll never use this stuff again. It’s one of those things that seems like a good idea but it’s a bit devastating to make something and then have the zipper split. It’s pretty much toast once it splits open. You can get it back together but it’s going to split again. So skip this type of zipper and buy them individually. Since it’s easy to shorten polyester coil zippers, I usually get 12” or 14” ones and then cut them down to size.