Birthday Zipper Pouch

If there is one person I can always count on to be excited about...well, anything I do, it is my mom.  It takes very little effort to impress her, at least if you are her favorite (and only) daughter.  So I knew that I needed to put my new hobby to use for her birthday.  I had already purchased a little Flip camera for her as a gift (to capture all the sweet and funny toddler moments when she keeps my son and my niece), so I decided to make her a small zipper pouch to keep the camera in.  Honestly, I doubt she'll actually keep it in there, but it was a good excuse to try something new, and a cheap way to get praise from my mother. =)

I stopped at the fabric store and tried to pick out a fabric that I thought my mom would like, but that would also have a forgiving pattern.  For the lining, I picked out a plain quilted fabric - I didn't know they made that, but it was perfect!  Honestly, I ended up with kind of boring fabric choices, and if I had it to do over again, I would pick out something much more interesting. The one thing I have learned is that if you pick out fabrics you love, you are almost guaranteed to love the results.

When I got home, the first thing I had to figure out was how to shorten a zipper.  This turned out to be as simple as whipstitching around the zipper and cutting off the unwanted length, although it's not as easy when you aren't sure what a "whipstitch" is. Did I mention that I'm a beginner?  Thank goodness for google! Once I figured that out, I used this tutorial:
http://www.skiptomylou.org/2009/01/14/how-to-make-a-lined-zipper-pouch-tutorial/

Actually I poked around several tutorials, but I think this is the one I relied on the most.  In the end, I ended up with this little beauty:

Made October 25, 2011

It's not perfect, but it works, and I only had to rip out a whole seam once!  As predicted, my mom was thrilled and my coworkers were impressed that I made something with a zipper!