 Hey guys, we are back with Sewing 101 again. This time we're making a very simple pencil bag. I know, don't be scared. This isn't about perfection sewing at all. Not by any stretch of the imagination, is it? Alright, so I've got two pieces of... This is actually duck cloth or canvas. You can get this at your fabric store, usually in the muslin or upholstery department. Duck cloth will work. It's a similar heavyweight fabric. Make sure you have a denim needle on your machine and that you've done your practicing so that you know how to adjust your machine should the tension be off. So, you need to take a scrap of fabric like we did with the other beginning lesson when we talked about our machine and you need to make sure always that you have a scrap of fabric that you've practiced a few stitches on so that you can check and make sure that the machine is going to sew well on that fabric. And if it's not sewing well that you've adjusted the tension until it does so well. Now, this is some fabric that was at one time a drop cloth on my table and I did some stenciling and things on it. Now it's ready to be made into something cool. You're also going to need a 9-inch zipper. I know, don't freak out. Honestly, please don't freak out. Just we're not doing anything fancy. I swear. I swear. All right. So the first thing we're going to do is we're going to attach our zipper to one side of our fabric. I need to make some room because I want you guys to see how this is going to get attached. Let's see if we can zoom in. Okay, so this is our zipper and these are in the middle, right? These are our zipper teeth. So we're going to butt our fabric up against the zipper teeth, some pins. I don't generally do a lot of pinning, but we're going to do it for the video because I think it would be easier to show you all. So I'm going to pin my fabric to my zipper. Now you could totally do this with a straight or a zigzag stitch and if you've got adventurous with your machine and you've figured out how to use a zigzag stitch, do a zigzag stitch on it, then by all means this would be a great project to use a zigzag on. Okay, so you want to pin it so that it's like that and you notice the right side is that way on the same side as the zipper pull. Yeah, so now let's do the other one. Zoom out. So I'm going to pin the fabric in place to the zipper. Now this is not a traditional use of a zipper. This is not. If you're making a dress for your granddaughter, don't put the zipper in this way. That's more advanced sewing and you're going to want to look at that up. I'm sure there's a YouTube video on that somewhere. Don't do it this way. I really don't advise it. So now we've got our two pieces of fabric pinned to our zipper like this. Yeah, so we're going to sew it down. Now my pinheads are all going the same way. Where are we? Yeah, they're all facing the same way and they're facing the way that I'm going to be sewing towards so that as I'm sewing, I can pull these. You're going to want to pull these out. Don't sew over your pins ever, ever, ever. It tends to break the needle and things tend to want to pop off and smack you in the eyeball. Guess how I know that. All right. So now we're going to put and I haven't changed. Yes, there's such a thing as a zipper foot. No, we're not using it. This is a regular zipper foot. I mean, a regular presser foot. So I'm going to line up my zipper just past the center of my presser foot. And I am going to pull my needle towards me just a little bit. I'm not pulling it all the way out yet. I'm going to hold my threads and I'm going to start stitching. Then I'm going to go back so now I know nothing's going to move around and I'm going to pull that pin all the way out. And I'm lining up the edge of my zipper with that same spot on my presser foot so that my stitches are nice and straight. There's a little mark in my presser foot. I'm just going slow and making sure. And if it's not perfect, I'm not too worried about it. Not for this project, but there's all kinds of markings on your presser foot and on the base of your sewing machine to help you line up your stitching so things come out straight. Now I'm stopping with my needle down into the fabric. I'm going to lift my presser foot up and I'm going to pull my zipper open. Maybe there we go. Okay, so that zipper pull is not in my way and it's going to be a little crooked because, you know, I was talking while I stitching. See? Alright, let's try that again because I was chatting and stitching and that didn't work very well. Now again, if you use a zigzag, you're going to catch more of your fabric and you have to be worried less about being perfect because it's a zigzag. So ideally you don't want to mess up like I did over here. You want it to look like this. If you know how to set a zigzag on your machine, then that's the ideal. So I'm going to push down one of my buttons right here, which does straight or zigzag and then I can just adjust this little button up here. And just for like a medium width zigzag, I'm going to use like number three. It goes from one, my machine goes from one to five. I'm going to go back to the beginning. I'm going to close my zipper to start. Turn all these crazy threads off. Drive me crazy. Now, if you're going to do a zigzag, I recommend just going for it. Don't worry about having it be messy as part of the charm. I have part of it over here that keeps missing. And just give it a little tug on it. Make sure everything's attached correctly. Now let's do the other side. We're going to just do a zigzag. I think a zigzag will be easier for attaching the zipper. Just like before, I'm going to get the stitches started. Then I'm going to start pulling my pins out as I go. Open my zipper. There we go. Definitely practice your stitches. At least figure out how to do straight and zigzag. If you have other stitches, don't worry about them right now. Just keep moving that zipper foot out of your way so that you don't get anything too strange. It can be hard to sew around the zipper pull if you don't have the zipper foot, which we don't right now. So I'm lifting my foot up and I'm constantly moving the zipper pull out of my way. There we go. So now we've got our zipper attached to our fabric like this. Okay, so we're going to fold it in half at the zipper. Mine's not going to meet up exactly because I didn't cut my two squares exactly the same, which is fine. I'm going to open my zipper just a little bit and I'm going to, ow, ouch. I just poked myself. I'm going to pin this together here. Pull everything down and pin it flat so there's no puckers. So I'm going to have to trim these two pieces to match. So to see they don't, they don't match. They're all off and wonky. If you cut your two pieces to match to begin with, you don't have that issue. Just, you know, just saying make sure you're, if you've pinned it and you're cutting it with the pins in the pinheads are not in your way. You don't want to hit a pinhead with the scissors any more than you do with the sewing machine. You don't fold it in half and make sure they're about the same. Yeah, they are going to trim off all the hairy bits. Now I could edit this video to take out all the bits about me sewing the zipper in where I started to try to do it as a straight stitch. Instead, I decided zigzag would be better and hold it better. I'm not going to because I want you guys to see to learn and, you know, know that we're not all perfect. I make plenty of mistakes, people. All right, so I'm going to bring the machine back towards me. Put this back in. Pull out some of my thread here. So I have a couple inches hanging off the back. Now we're going to go back to setting it for a straight stitch. It's about about three and a half inch stitch length here and I put this back to zero, which means it won't go back and forth. It'll just go straight. I'm going to now. Let's see if I can zoom in here. Moving the machine around. There we go. So do you see all these lines here on them on the plate? Those help you line up the edge of the fabric. So that when you're stitching, if you keep it on a particular line, say the number two, then your your stitches are going to be straight. You can also just line it up with the edge of your presser foot. Either one will work. So let's go back out. Okay. I generally speaking use the edge of my presser foot for most projects. So I'm going to do that. I'm going to try to line it up with my presser foot. I'm going to start by putting a few stitches in. Then I'm of course going to go back and forth. Here we go. Now I'm going to stop about there with the needle down in the fabric and I'm about a half of a presser foot away from the bottom edge. So hopefully when I turn it, the new edge is lined up with the edge of my presser foot here. So now I can keep going again. I'm going to stop about a seam with the way. I think I want to go there. Yep. Back and forth. When you get to the end, just like in the beginning, make sure you go back and forth and then let's trim and there you go. Pencil bag. So usually, you know, if you're doing a proper sewing project, you don't you want to cut some sorry, hang on. I can't do think of two things. I want to say two things at once. So you want to make sure you get some of these long threads out from behind the zipper because they'll clog up your zipper. All right. You can also take a little bit of white school glue or there is a glue called fray check you can get at the fabric store and you can put that on the inside here of these stitches and it dries clear fray check dries clear and it will keep these this fabric from unraveling and the threads getting caught in the zipper. If you're doing a proper sewing project of a pencil bag, you generally don't leave these raw edges on the outside. I don't mind that, especially for those of us who are mixed media artists, you know, I love a good raw edge. Who doesn't? I think it adds texture and character. You could sell different fun pieces of paper or lace, appliques, all those kind of things to the fabric front or back before you put the pencil bag together. And have some of those things hanging off the edge. That would be fun. But if you're going to add any decorations to the front or back of the bag, you want to do it before you put the bag together. So that's it right now. I hope you guys make some fun pencil bags and you have some fun with this project and your sewing machines a little less intimidating. I hope figure out with your machine this week how to do a straight and a zigzag stitch. Don't feel like you need to be intimidated by the fact that you're putting in a zipper and you have to have a special zipper foot or anything like that. Just do it with what you have. All right, that's it for today. Go out and have a great day. Do something nice for yourself because you deserve it and I'll see you later. Bye.