Zipper Workshop

Back in October, Maria, Alison and I headed to Canberra for the day to attend a Zipper Workshop by Nicole Mallelieu at Addicted to Fabric.

Our requirement list had us purchase fabric, lining and zips for the Large Tote and Satchel.

After checking out the Nicole Malleliue Design - Made by You flicker group I fell in love with the all the different flaps that people had added to their Totes, so I headed off to Ikea and found this wonderful print and then managed to get a reasonable match in some quilting cotton for the remainder of the Tote and the lining.

The workshop consisted of 4 types of zippers which Nicole said we would probably only get 2 completed, maybe 3 but were given notes for all 4, which were:

• Super Simple Zipper
• Exposed Zipper Pocket
• Lapped Zipper Pocket
• Zipped Gusset

I decided to do the Exposed Zipper Pocket first in the Tote lining,

and then proceeded to work on the Zipped Gusset for the top of the Tote.

Over the last month (I'm not sure where the time has gone) I have:

• fused the Tote first with Medium-Heavy Iron-on Interfacing and then put a layer of  H640 Fusible Wadding Medium over the top using my Elna Press in both instances;
• Put the Lapped Zipper Pocket on the back of the Tote so the zip doesn't rub against my clothing;

• Added a zipper patched pocket to the opposite side of the Tote lining;

• Added a phone pocket on the end wall of the lining.

and now have a bag that looks like this:

and this:

I'm not sure if you can see the black pins on the strap on the right hand side of the Tote above but this is where the bag is up to.

It was whilst I was trying to decide on the strap length, that I realised that no matter what length I made the strap the actual size of the Tote was not something I would ever use, it wears me which is not how I want my bags to be.

Now it is fortunate that when my darling Mum and Sister visited yesterday the Tote wasn't quite finished but my Sister did like it "quite a lot" so maybe this Tote has a new home already, I am waiting for the call back!