Everyone has their thing (or a few things) that they especially love to make. Maybe it’s clothes, paintings, bags, cakes. I’ve known for awhile that my thing is quilts, but I also dabble in other sewn makes.

Well, I can tell you that my thing is not zip pouches. I know this for sure after days making seven - SEVEN - pouches factory-style as teacher’s gifts. I never was so thankful that I don’t make-to-sell my handmade. Phew. So glad that’s over.

The crazy got started when Elora received a notice about Juffendag. That translates as Teacher’s Day and is a collective birthday party for the teachers, at school. With the school year wrapping up, it felt like a good time for a handmade gift to show our appreciation. And we are so appreciative! Elora has some great teachers. The thing is that she goes to two different schools and thus has seven teachers. I-yi-yi! But I’m a professional; I can do this, right?

Elora suggested a quilt (maybe I should have listened?) but given the party slated just one week away, something smaller was in order. Together we paged through favorite sewing books and settled on the QAYG Zipper Pouch from Svetlana Sotak’s That Handmade Touch. Only I decided to make the pouches in faster, straightforward patchwork, inspired by these pouches, also by Svetlana.

Things started out well. Choosing fabrics is always fun, maybe even more so with small projects. It’s a good time to take risks. I chose inspiring prints for one side of each pouch and then created grids of coordinating rectangles, all sourced from fabric scraps, for the other side. My rectangles are cut 2 3/4” x 3 1/4”, should you like to know.

Here are my patchworks paired with the inspiration fabrics: A few light-colored choices and some darker varieties.

The inspiration floral fabrics are by Art Gallery fabrics. I love the style of their florals, which feel both beautiful and modern. The only outlier is the dark teal floral, which is Cool to be Kind from Cotton & Steel.

With quilts, once your patchwork is assembled, you’re usually well over halfway done. If you have your quilt longarm quilted, the finishing is a breeze. But with zip pouches - - - Well, we’ve only begun. I still had to:

• Choose matching zippers and linings fabrics

• Quilt the pouch outers

• Interface the pouch linings

• Prep the zippers with zipper tabs on both ends.

• And it goes on!

Suffice it to say, the process felt long and tedious. I know that’s ironic because making a quilt obviously takes longer than making a pouch, but it is what it is. They’re just not my thing.

Many hours later - - - they’re done!

Thank goodness, they came out well. Now if I could just wipe the process from my memory, it will be a total win, haha.

Unfortunately, I don’t know the teachers well enough to know which pouch would best suit which recipient. I think that’s actually part of what I was missing in this process. Customizing a handmade gift for the recipient is a big part of the fun! Due to corona, contact with teachers has been quite limited.

Ah well, I shall let Elora decide which pouch is for which teacher, and that shall mean something at least to Elora. I bet her favorite teacher gets the pinkest one!

Ok, tomorrow, back to quilts!