Friday, June 26, 2009

Making Tiny Pouches

Here's what you need to make your very own tiny pouch. You can use this tiny pouch to carry tiny things like coins, small rocks, cell phones, cameras, and tiny mice. Behold!Don't you want one?
Below is a key feature of the tiny pouch: no binding around the flap. And a lip-to-flap transition that is clean and strong. Yeah!
Here's what you need: Two 7x11" pieces of fabric & two 6.75x7" pieces. And a buckle, some webbing, and some binding for the lip (optional--more on that later). Oh, and some fabric or webbing or Velcro for the belt loop.

Here's what we've got. 1000d Cordura for the shell and nylon packcloth for the liner. This makes a pouch that's 6" wide at the top, 5" high, with a 4x2" bottom.
The two big pieces are for the back, the two middle pieces are for the front. And the smallest piece is for the belt loop.
Okay, so everything's cut out. Now we're gonna sew the belt loop to the back of the pouch.
Let's bind the sides of the belt loop first. This is four inches wide--same width as the bottom of the pouch. This can accommodate a 2" belt. The fabric piece is 5x6".
Now we're gonna sew it onto the back...which is the right side (uncoated) of the shell:
Like so. We've sewn this on the line where the flap folds, 6.75" from the bottom.
And fold it down.
Now we sew the front together--liner and shell. (These are the small pieces.) We'll then bind this. If you don't want to put binding here, you don't have to. Just make the pieces like 1/2 an inch longer and sew 'em together... I used binding here so I can use my label.
We've put some webbing on here for the buckle. Right in the middle. Notice the stitching an inch & 3/4 up from the bottom. This is going to be the front edge of the bottom. We want the buckle to sit there so it's in a good position to receive the male part...so it's easier to use with one hand.
Now we're gonna sew the front and back together at the sides, but not the bottom. And we haven't done anything with the back liner yet. That's next.
Okay, so we've sewn the front and back together. Now we're going to slap the back liner on there, wrong side up. Make sure it's on the side with the front. Sew up the sides and around the top, but not the bottom.
See, the bottom's still open.
Now we're going to draw our flap shape. Pretty nice curve there. And then we'll sew around it...and on the sides, too. This has a 1/2" seam allowance on the sides.
And now we'll cut the excess fabric off the flap around the curve. You can cut some notches in there too if you want.
Now this is the magic part: we're going to turn the back piece/flap right-side out. Notice the front part is still inside out. This makes it a bit easier to sew around the flap.
And sew we will. You don't have to do this...but it gives it a nice finished look. Otherwise your flap'll look like a tongue.
Boom.
The bag's still turned inside out...and we sew up the bottom. I've got a 3/4 inch seam allowance on the bottom of the pouch. This makes it a bit easier to fold the bottom corners...like so:
Sewin' up the corners.
Here it is, still turned inside out. I won't bother to cut the corners off...they're so small.
Turned out right. If you do a good job sewing the bottom your seams will line up like so.
Sew on the buckle. You can use whatever kind of attachment device you want...Velcro, buttons, metal snaps, magnets...whatever.
And we're done!
Now that you know how to make this, the variations are endless.

Happy sewing!

Love,
Leif Labs.

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