Vinyl Zip Pouches from Vintage Patterns

These zip pouches still give me the goosebumps....

When my siblings were cleaning out my parents' house this past summer,  they found a box containing my mother's wedding dress pattern, scraps of the bridal fabric, and even the receipt....

I knew my mother's wedding dress was long gone.  I can still remember the day when she threw it out....  It had been stored in the farmhouse attic, and at some point the roof had leaked.  When my mother discovered that her dress had been ruined, she simply threw it out....  That always haunted me!  She seemed OK with it (at least from what I had observed as a child), but I always wished that she had saved it so that we could have salvaged at least something from it.

So, imagine my surprise when my sister presented me with the newly-found box of scraps.  I was thrilled!  But, it wasn't until a few months later when I opened the box to sift through it again that I discovered the receipt!!  It's the coolest document ever to me; it lists my mother's maiden name,  the address of where she was living at the time, the yardage amounts for her dress and her two bridesmaids' dresses,  how much they paid for all the fabric, and the date.  It even documents that weddings weren't such a big deal back then - my mother bought all that fabric on August 10, made her dress, and was married by the end of September of that same year.  Done.

I love that the pattern lists her name in pencil and documents her tiny size.  

:)

I think she even looks a bit like the bride in the pattern!

I knew I wanted to do something with the pattern for my sisters and sister-in-law for Christmas, but what??  I was so grateful that the idea for these zip pouches came to me one day in class when I was chatting about it with some of my students.

  The pouch made out of the receipt is backed with some of the bridal fabric scraps.

We also came across one of my dad's shirt patterns, so it made the perfect zip pouch as well.

I love the "J. J. Newberry Co." stamp!!

It took me a little bit to figure out just how to I wanted to do them, but I am tickled with the results!

Here's how I went about it:

After ironing a piece of Kona cotton (color PFD) fabric onto a sheet of freezer paper, I fed the fabric through my ink jet printer and photocopied the images onto it.

Then, I ironed some fusible vinyl onto the fabric.  Just be sure to cover it with a press cloth before fusing.

I trimmed the zippers, added zipper tabs, and turned the photocopied fabric into a zip pouch using this method.

They are easy to make as long as you have an ink jet printer that will feed the fabric through easily.

I am so, so pleased with how these turned out!!

Now I can't stop thinking about what else I can turn into vinyl zip pouches....