Make a "Candy Bag Zipper Pouch" with Jenny!

Hello everyone, I'm Jenny from MSQC. And today we are making dreams come true. A while ago I did a

zipper

bag tutorial and then I did a Facebook live where I did the same tutorial but used

candy

bags. And many of you have requested the full tutorial. So today we will do it for you. So to

make

this, what you will need is a bag of

candy

. You're going to need a little bit, a piece of batting. A piece of backing material. One

zipper

and you'll need some of this iron on vinyl, this Iron on Heat N Bond vinyl.

And this is so fun because once you realize that if you iron vinyl onto a candy wrapper you can

make

anything, a bag or a

pouch

. So this is really cool. I mean you could have a bag of chips, you know? I mean it's really fun to do this. Here are some examples of what I'm talking about. This is like a small package of Tootsie Rolls. This one is really fun because I found it and you may or may not be able to see it, I don't know. But I actually found Tootsie Roll fabric to line it.

How cute is that? So here I have a little bag of M&Ms. And they all have the zipper on the top just like the zipper bag. And don't stress about the zipper because we're going to make it easy for you. Here's some Dove chocolate. You know, I'm not going to admit anything, but hey, I ate that whole bag myself. These are M&M's and I actually went looking for some of these and had a hard time finding them. In fact, they have changed shape and are taller, which I think makes for a cooler bag. Let me show you how to do this.

So the first thing you'll want to do is grab your candy bag and empty it. And I don't care how you do it. You can't judge here. Do whatever you want. Mine is in a bag at home. And then what we're going to do is cut off the ends of this and the bottom of this. It is easier to work with if it is two separate pieces, the front and the back. So let me take my ruler here. Here we go. And I'm just going to place this, right on this same edge here, right where all of this, where they merge it.

I'm just going to cut that part out right there. So what I'm going to do is not worry about this seam here because it's on the back of all of mine. You can see. I mean, it's on the back of all of these, so we won't worry about it. And then I'm going to cut just the bottom part. And be careful with my ruler. I like to slide to the edge. I'm very, right on that crease and I'm going to remove that little part from there. Okay, look how small it is. And then we're going to do the same thing all the way up because it's much easier with two pieces.

Okay, just a little bit of peel. Here we go. Alright, now we're ready to merge our, our bag. And we want to merge it with the iron, the iron on vinyl. This is great because you can iron it onto fabric. You can iron it on anything and it will instantly make your fabric waterproof. It comes in several different ways. It comes, I think it comes matte and shiny. I'm not sure. Oh yes, this is the shine. I like the shine. Alright, here we go. It has a grille on one side. And the other side has this vinyl like this.

So what I'm going to do is cut a piece of this that's a little bit bigger than my candy bags. So I'm going to leave them here like this. And so two fit. Oh, this takes a little bit, let me bring one more ruler here so I can have a hand to hold this. Here we go. Alright. Now I'm just going to use my little ruler and use this grid line and go ahead. Here we go. Alright, you want to turn the iron on to medium heat. And I lowered mine a little. You know I'm usually high all the time.

So I'm going to turn it down a little bit. And then, let's take this off like this. Take these apart. And I like to just fold that edge back and just roll it up and it should come apart pretty easily. Okay, now you're going to put the shiny side down and the sticky side up. And to the sticky part we are going to put the sticky part or the part that we want to merge. I'm just going to leave it at that. And this one is a little bubbly because it has that seam on the back.

This one should sit nice and flat here just like that. I'm going to try to get out all the bubbles we can. The front is always pretty. The back always has some small bubbles. But let's reduce that so it doesn't matter. Then I'm going to place this here on my ironing mat, like this. And I'm just going to leave that there. And I'm going to let it go ahead and you know, if it wants to stick to my mat a little bit, that's fine. Now, the paper that you removed from the back will be your ironing sheet.

And I like to do it on the side to make sure my iron doesn't touch the plastic on the sides because you don't want that on your iron. And then we're just going to iron this. And you hold it for about eight seconds. And then I'm going to leave this like this. Be careful not to let the iron go over the edge. I know I'm a fast counter up to eight. Alright, now this is done for us, just like that. Now let's cut them out. So I'm actually going to cut them in half for now like this.

And then I'm going to go ahead and prepare them for quilting. So I'm going to take my batting. And I'm going to place them right on top of the batting. And you can trim the plastic if you want. And look, this is serious, you actually already know what I'm going to trim off the bottom of this because it has some little bits of hair from my ironing mat on it and I don't want that to sit on top of the other one. So this is really just a bit of batting. You can see it even has a cut.

And then we are going to put the bottom part, our fabric, our inner fabric. And we're going to put that nice side down so we have the fabric down, the batting and these little top pieces. Now I find it easier to quilt them one at a time. And that's how I'm going to do it, but you know, if you decide that you want to quilt everything, you can do that. But I'm going to go ahead and cut this piece in half right here, like this, and have two pieces for this. And you can see I'm wasting a little bit because I'm cutting everything out.

And you should probably trim them. Because every bag is different, you know, I'm just saying use scrap fabric because you don't know, you know, it's not like you, I can say that every candy bag you buy will use this many yards. You know everything will be a little different. Now, one thing I will tell you is that when you cut them out for quilting, you don't want them to be too small because if they move or slide, you don't want them to come off the fabric. So I'll leave probably two inches on each side. And then when I have them all quilted, I'll cut them out and they'll be exactly the same size.

Alright, we're going to take this piece to our sewing machine. Now, I'm not a big machine quilter, so for me I'm just going to quilt this in a straight line, which means I'm going to start on one side here. And I'm going to place the presser foot right along the edge of the bag. And then I'm just going to sew straight lines about a half inch apart across their width. Okay, now I'm done with all my little machine quilting. And you can see that I went through this seam. It won't matter. You can see that my lines are not perfectly straight.

They are not exactly the same distance. None of that is going to matter. You can do it nearby. You can do it far away. You can go back and make a chess board. In fact, you could summarize all of these things. You know there are so many ways to quilt this it can be a lot of fun. So what I'm going to do is the front of my bag is what matters most to me, so this is the one I'm going to cut out first because it's going to determine the size of the back of my bag.

So what I'm going to do is place this right along the edge and trim it. Now I'm going to use this ruler as a ruler for the other side as well to make sure it's nice and square. Alright, now I'm going to come over here and trim this edge and then these sides as well. So line this up directly on your line and place your ruler right on the edge, right there. We don't want to change the size too much because well, I don't know, I guess it doesn't matter, that's up to you personally. But I love them, I love the size of them because some are small, some are big and some are tall.

Alright, now I'm going to trim this one out anyway, but then I'm going to place them together to make sure they actually line up exactly. And I don't know why I always do the tips first, but I'm not sure if that matters. You can do it as you see fit. Make sure I'm at peace here. Alright, now I'm going to place them on top of each other, making sure they're exactly the same size. And they are quite close. I think they are, I think they are, I would say, very close. You may not even need to trim them.

Alright, now you can see that they are ready to go. They have been padded. They are aligned. They are ready to go. And we're going to tackle our zipper. Don't be afraid of this zipper. The zipper just isn't as tough as you think. For our zipper, what we need is a piece of fabric about one and a half centimeters long. So I'm going to come here and cut off an inch and a half. And I'm going to move them down here because we're done with them. Wow, I guess I better leave this here because I'm going to need it.

And we're going to choose a zipper. And I think I'm going to go with red for this. I think it will be fun. And to prepare our zipper, what we need to make is a piece of fabric that's about an inch and a half by maybe six inches long because we're going to make little tabs on the end of the zipper that are going to hold it down. So what I'm going to do is fold this in half like this. And then I'm going to fold these edges like this. And then press it to form a small, closed, folded piece of fabric that I can slide the zipper into all the way.

So we'll do it here on the ironing board. First I'm going to fold it in half like this. Make sure it is right in the middle. And you're probably ready to turn that iron back on. And then I'm going to fold them in half. So I made a center fold line right there. Now the edges will be folded towards the middle like this. And this is just an easy way to close the ends of the zipper and make it look a little more finished. And there are many small binding tools that can be used to do this that would make this part much easier.

Here we go. Alright, now I'm going to fold this over and press it down right here. It's easier for me to go from this direction. You'll probably find it easier to see too. Alright, this is going to hold our zipper. Now we're going to take our bag and we're going to take our zipper and what you want is a zipper, you want a zipper that's about the same size or a little bit shorter. So we have to leave room for our seams here. So I'm going to cut this off, make sure you leave the zipper head here.

And then we're going to cut this about ¾ inch shorter. So I'm going to end up cutting out these little pieces right here. So let me trim them first. Now don't cut, don't cut your little metal clips there, those little stops, don't cut that. But I'm going to go ahead and place this here and cut right on the other side of them. Here we go. And this is a nylon zipper, so it is very easy to cut. And then what we're going to do is leave this here. And I'm going to move this half an inch. And I'm going to move my ruler half an inch over here and make this cut right here.

Now this is now an open cut, so if I were to open this zipper, it would slide out. We don't want that to happen. So what we're going to do is slide the zipper here. And we're going to take this to the sewing machine and we're going to sew it. And that will make a stop so we can't, this zipper won't come off, it will open from there. So, line this up right under your foot and make sure the zipper is pushed all the way to the fold and just sew. And I'm going to topstitch that thing, everything.

Now I'm going to lift it up and make sure I catch both sides. And I did, hooray. So now I'm going to trim this to the same size as the zipper, just like that. And then I'm going to look at this other end and do the same thing down here. So this one is a little more complicated because it's together. You have to hold this with your fingers. And right now I'm going to cut past this support because if I try to go through it with my needle it will break. So I'm going to do that.

And then I'm going to come and slide this here. And hold it. You have to hold your, your, your lip right. You know you have to bite your lip like that to keep it all there, right? I will always, always have a chapped lip here because I'm like when I sew. Alright, keep them together and sew. Alright, here we go. Now, it's stuck on both sides, so I can trim it. Here we go and here. Alright, now our zipper is ready and we can put it on. And how we're going to do that is we're going to place our zipper here right side down, like this, like this.

And what I'm going to do is I'm going to open this up, but about halfway down the seam, I'm going to close the zipper to the other side. So I'm going to sew up to the zipper head. And this zipper is actually a little short. See right here. I'm going to lose about a half inch on each side, but it will still work. Okay, I'm going to stay here. And I'm going to place my presser foot right on the edge of this zipper. Now I'm getting close to this end, so I'm going to lift the presser foot right there and slide the zipper head closed here.

And that way the zipper head, the zipper pullzipper, won't get in your way. Alright, now that we've sewn this seam, what I'm going to do is fold it back like this. And now I'm going to topstitch right along that edge, okay? Right along the edge. And the zipper pull doesn't seem to get in my way at all. All right, now what we're going to do is come over here and put your back on it. And on the back you have to make sure they're still going in the right direction. And that's why we want to leave this like this.

And make sure the sides of your bag match up and then you'll put this on your zipper like this. Then once again. Open it. Look and make sure they are positioned correctly. Place it back on this edge. Make sure your sides are aligned. And you can put a pin in there or you know some people use a glue stick, you know, to glue that zipper together. We're just going to cross the end here and cross it and sew it. Now I'm getting to where the zipper head is going to bother me, so I lift the presser foot and slide the zipper pull along where I'm sewing.

And we are fine. We're going to do the same thing here where we bring this back. And I'm going to close the zipper and I'm just going to press this down with my finger and we're going to sew the other side of the zipper. Alright here we go. Make sure the piece is folded down because that will help secure it. And the stitching on these is not, it's not for decoration or anything like that. It's because the bag tends to be, it just looks better when you sew it. Okay, now what we need to do is sew this entire side.

And if I do that and my zipper is closed, I won't be able to turn it. So we have to make sure that our zipper is open. And then we're going to leave this. And we're going to sew, we're going to line them up just the way they are. And look at this one, this one is just a hair away from here. So I'm going to go ahead and not worry about it and just sew here. And sew from the bottom to the top of the other side. And then we'll trim it as we go. Then you want to sew pretty close to where the zipper tabs are.

And then I'll get to the bottom of it. Make sure it lines up like this. And go up the other side. And I think I can go back a point. Just back off a little. And then when I get up here, I'm going to topstitch because I don't want that to come out. Now, with some scissors or your rotary cutter you can trim this excess. That will make it much easier to turn. So look, I just clipped near the edge of that. And I'm going to crop out this little corner here. And I think my butt is fine.

I'm going to go ahead and trim this other side here, just a little bit. Here we go. Alright, now we can turn our bag. And I'm just using my finger to push that corner. And then also my finger to remove the tab. See what finish that makes that look like. Well, I'll show you in a minute. I'm in the middle of the big reveal, so I can't really stop and show you that corner. But I'll do it. It's a little work to turn them... Okay, use my finger to poke out that corner. And then I'm going to push this zipper tab right up there.

Alright, now take a look at that. And here you see how the little zipper tabs go up and they are all finished. And then you can close it and use it for whatever you need. Isn't that the coolest thing? And it still smells like chocolate. Anyway, this iron on vinyl is amazing. You can use it on fabric, candy bags, whatever you want. We hope you enjoyed this MSQC candy zipper bag tutorial.