Tutorial Tuesday

Happy Tuesday, everyone! I have a cute and easy tutorial for you today, featuring a vintage embroidery pattern available for free from French-Knots.com. I embroidered this ribbon frame pattern, and added my hand written initial, on the front of a small pouch. I will be doing some traveling in the near future and needed a jewelry pouch for toting around my rings and things.

To make your own jewelry pouch, you will need the following supplies:

- Two pieces of fabric 9-inches wide by 14-inches long (one for exterior & one for lining)

- One 35-inch piece of ribbon or string

- One medium-sized safety pin

- Embroidery supplies

- Sewing machine and coordinating thread

- scissors

- iron and ironing board

Step One: Transfer your embroidery pattern to your fabric and stitch it up. I used this ribbon and flower frame pattern, and hand wrote my initial into the center. If you don't want to add your own handwriting, there are various embroidery alphabets available, some great ones are available here, or you could use your favorite computer font.

Step Two: Place your exterior and lining pieces of fabric right sides together. Mark a 2-inch space that will remain open and unsewn along one of the longer sides. Using a 1/2-seam allowance, stitch around all four sides, leaving that 2-inch space open.

Step Three: Clip the corners and flip the fabric out through the 2-inch opening and press. You don't need to worry about stitching the space used to flip just yet. We'll stitch it shut in the following steps.

Step Four: With your lining piece facing up, fold over 1-inch of the short edges of fabric and press. Stitch each side along the bottom edge to create the space for the drawstring.

Step Five: Fold the fabric in half so that the lining is exposed and the exterior fabric is facing itself.

Stitch up both sides using a 1/4 seam allowance, stopping just at the perpendicular stitch, made to create the space for the drawstring. This stitch will close the opening we used to the flip the fabric in Step Three. Flip.

Step Six: Run a safety pin through one end of the ribbon or string. Use the safety pin to guide the ribbon, push the ribbon through both sides of the top edge. 

Step Seven: Knot the ends of the ribbon or string. I decided to trim mine a bit at this stage. 

Add your items and enjoy!

Hope you give this tutorial a try and take it on your next trip!