Lined Purse with Zipper Tutorial

It has been a while since my last tutorial!  My hope is that a beginner seamstress will find the instructions and pictures easy to use and the expert seamstress will gain inspiration on how to apply this technique to other projects! Let's Go!

Lined Purse with a Zipper!

Materials:

1. 4 pieces of equal sized fabrics. The ones shown here are cut to 8in. x 4.5".

2. 1 zipper, longer than the length of your fabric.

Steps:

1. Place the outer fabric face up andlay the zipper face down on top.  Line the up the edges.  *Notice my zipper is way larger than my fabric.  This is not a problem as I will cut off both sides when I am complete.  The nice thing about using larger zippers is that I can position the zipper pull off my fabric so that I do not have to sew around it.  Using larger zippers mean that I also have a zipper on hand and not one that is too short for my project.

 3. Place the lining fabric face down on the zipper and line up the edges.

 3. Pin all three layers together.

 4. Using a zipper foot, sew all three layers together.

 5. Remove pins and it should look like this!

 6. Iron seams, fold back lining and iron again.

 7. Place second piece of outer fabric face up. Then place zipper on top face down.

 8. Place lining fabric face down on top of zipper and line up all edges.

 9. Pin the three layers together and sew together as before.

10. Remove pins, iron seams, fold back lining and iron again.

11. One side should look like this:

 12. The other side should look like this:

 13. Pick up just the lining pieces so that the right sides are together.

 14.  Place on table with lining right sides together and outer fabric pieces together.

 15. Unfold one side and unzip zipper half-way.  This is a crucial step and yet soooo easy to forget.

 16. Pin edges together.  Zipper should be folded toward the outer fabric. 

 17. Sew around edges with 1.2 in. seam and leave about a 2in opening on the side edge of lining fabric.

 18. Trim edges and clip corners.

 19. Yes, cut right through the zipper on either side.

 20. Reach through the opening and turn the purse outside in!

 21. Once turned, pull lining out and finger press the opening.

 22. Sew the opening closed with your machine as close to the edge of the fabric as possible.  Just go slow. *Note* You can slip stitch this opening closed by hand.  I have found that with the opeing on the side and not the bottom of the lining it is less noticeable and therefore, a machine stitch is not noticed either.

 23. Push the lining back in and iron! Voila!