A quilted zipper pouch with a leather tab, made from scratch

Every project on this blog starts the same way: with a scrap of something beautiful and an hour of indecision about whether it deserves to become a bag. This one began with a zip I bought on a whim, a piece of denim pulled from an op shop bin in Melbourne, and a strip of vegetable-tanned leather that had been sitting in a drawer since last winter. Turned into a small quilted zipper pouch with a leather tab, it is the sort of thing I now carry in every bag, for pens, a spare charging cable, and the small objects that otherwise rattle around loose.

The pouch suits a beginner with a sewing machine, but it is not a five-minute make. The quilting is the slow part, and the leather tab is the fiddly part, so give yourself a weekend afternoon and a calm, uncluttered table. If you have already sewn a zip bag, most of the construction will feel familiar. If the walking foot is new to you, I have included the details that took me three attempts to work out, including how to stop the wadding creeping and how to keep the tab stitching from bowing.

Material choice matters more here than in most small sewing projects, because a pouch gets handled constantly and washed rarely. I use a medium-weight quilting cotton for the outside, a piece of denim or canvas for reinforcement, 80/20 poly-cotton wadding for loft, and a lighter cotton voile for the lining. Spotlight stocks most of it on High Street in Prahran and in Sydney, and Hobbs wadding, which is made in Australia, is my default batting when I want the pouch to hold its shape without turning rigid. For the tab, vegetable-tanned leather takes a stitch cleanly and can be burnished to a tidy edge; chrome-tanned hides feel softer but are harder to punch and fray at the cut.

I film most of my makes for the YouTube channel, where the camera sits above the table and the audio is close enough to follow the little shuffle of the zip foot as it works around the corner. The same process notes go out on Instagram and Pinterest as I go, which is where I usually answer questions about fabrics and wadding. This pouch makes a good first leather project too, since the tab is small enough to practise on and cheap enough to redo if the first one goes crooked.

Choosing fabrics, wadding and notions

The outer fabric sets the character of the whole pouch. A dense quilting cotton in a small print gives a tidy domestic look, while selvedge denim straight from a Salvation Army or Red Cross op shop brings a slightly worn-in character from the very first wear. For something tougher, a piece of cotton canvas from a bag-making supplier works well and takes a grid of quilting stitches without distorting. Whatever you choose, avoid anything too lightweight, because a thin face lets the wadding show through as a lumpy shadow.

Wadding is where Australian summers matter. Poly-cotton batting has more memory and gives a crisper panel, which suits a pouch that should stand up in a handbag. Pure cotton wadding is cooler against the body but compresses with use, so I switch to it for the flat, on-the-table pouches I keep in my desk drawer. A thin wadding can also be bonded to the outer fabric with Vilene fusible web, which stops the layers shifting during quilting and reduces the bulk around the zip.

The zip should be a nylon coil, and longer than you think you need. A 20 centimetre zip fits a pouch around 15 centimetres wide with a flat seam, and if you buy a 25 centimetre one you have room to trim the top edge down square with a rotary cutter. Invisible zips look refined but fight with quilting and with a walking foot, so I keep them for unlined bags. Add a leather needle, heavy-duty thread for the tab, and a small pair of snips for the threads.

Drafting the pattern and cutting the pieces

I work to a finished size of roughly 15 by 20 centimetres, which holds a decent handful of items without becoming a gym bag. The pattern is rectangles, which keeps the layout simple: one front and one back panel for the outside, two lining pieces, a rectangle of muslin or cotton lawn for the quilting backing, and the leather tab. Adding a 1.5 centimetre seam allowance to every fabric piece is plenty if you are quilting, because the bulk already trims down.

Wash and press your fabrics before cutting, especially the denim. Shrinkage that happens later will pucker the quilting lines and make the finished pouch sit unevenly against the lining. Cut with a rotary cutter and a quilting ruler rather than with scissors, since straight edges matter when you are trimming wadding later. Keep the wadding about half a centimetre larger than the fabric panel all the way around, and trim the excess after quilting, which gives you a much neater edge than guessing before the stitches go in.

For the tab, cut a strip about 2.5 centimetres wide and 10 centimetres long, with the grain running along the length. Use a steel rule and a craft knife or a guillotine if you have one, and mark the flesh side and the grain side before you cut, because the two sides of leather behave very differently under a presser foot. Slightly rounded corners make the finished tab easier to loop through a zip pull.

Quilting the outer panel

Layer the backing, the wadding and the outer fabric right sides together, then baste them with long loose stitches or plenty of safety pins. Basting in from the edge and leaving the middle loose keeps the layers flat without creating drag as they pass under the foot. Trim the backing to match the wadding, and leave the outer fabric a little larger at this stage.

I quilt in a straight grid at roughly 2.5 centimetre intervals, turning the fabric a quarter turn after each line. A walking foot with a needle up and down a couple of notches gives the control I want, and I always start with a test square because the tension of a new fabric can push the layers sideways as you sew. Sewing straight across the intersections of the grid afterwards secures everything and makes the panel lie flatter.

Once the quilting is done, trim the wadding and backing to the edge of the outer fabric using the ruler and rotary cutter, then cut the finished panel to size with a 1.5 centimetre allowance. Bind the raw edge with bias binding if you want a traditional finish, or simply topstitch the panel to the lining later. A second layer of quilting cotton at the top edge, behind the zip, adds structure and stops the pouch from slumping open when it is empty.

Adding the zip and turning the pouch right side out

Sew the zip to the top edges of the front and back panels first, right sides together, with the zip teeth centred on the seam line. I use a zip foot and a short stitch length, and I backstitch at each end. If the zipper is a nylon coil, it is forgiving, and if a tooth catches, unpick a few centimetres and start again rather than forcing it.

Turn the panels so the right sides face outwards and the zip runs along the top, then sew the side and bottom seams with the lining pieces. Push the corners through with a point turner or a knitting needle, ease them into a neat square, and press. The lining sits loose inside so the pouch can expand slightly when it is full, and I catch-stitch the lining near the bottom to keep it from riding up.

A pouch like this ends up on my desk holding pens, a hair tie, and one of the tiny collectible bottles from my figural mini bottles shelf, which is about the only reason I would carry something that small in cotton. Once everything is turned and pressed, run your finger along the seam around the zip to check for gaps, and sew them closed before the tab goes on.

Attaching the leather tab

There are three reliable ways to fix a leather tab to a zip pouch, and they suit different levels of fussiness. The simplest is a loop that passes through the zip pull: fold the strip around the pull, punch two holes with a diamond punch and a small hammer, and sew through with a leather needle. The second option is a flap fixed to the top edge of the front panel with a short strip of hook-and-loop tape underneath, which lets the pouch open wide. The third is a riveted tab, using a leather punch and a rivet gun, if you want the hardware look.

Whichever route you take, the leather needs to be burnished or sealed at the cut edge before stitching, otherwise it frays into a fuzzy fringe within a week. A little leather dye applied with a cloth gives the tab a deeper, more even colour, and a beeswax block run over the edge keeps fibres in check.

Sew slowly with a leather needle, and expect to change your machine needle for the tab only. Stitch through the holes you have punched rather than trusting the feed dogs, since leather needs the needle to do the work. A saddle stitch, working the thread through each hole twice in opposite directions, holds up far better than a single pass, and it is the technique I use on the tabs that get daily handling.

Finishing, care and small improvements

Press the finished pouch on the reverse, using a cloth and a warm iron, and keep the steam light around the leather. Cotton quilting fades in strong Australian sun, so store the pouch out of a west-facing window if you care about the colour. Clean the cotton parts with a damp cloth and a little mild detergent, and treat the leather with a conditioner once or twice a year rather than weekly. Most of the time I just wipe the tab with a dry cloth and leave it alone.

Small improvements make a surprising difference. A short pocket stitched to the lining gives you somewhere to put a flat card, which is the item most likely to scratch the quilting. A tiny key clip on the side loop lets the pouch hang from a bag strap. If you line the top edge with a second strip of quilting cotton, the pouch looks finished from every angle, including the ends where the zip sits.

The size is easy to change, and I make two versions. The small one, about 15 by 20 centimetres, becomes a pencil case or a glasses pouch, and the larger one, closer to 25 by 18 centimetres, works as a travel pouch for cables and a phone charger. Making the size change is simply a matter of cutting longer rectangles and buying a longer zip, which makes this an easy project to scale up once you have the technique.

Making more than one and sharing the results

Handmade pouches make excellent gifts, and a batch of them is a reasonable thing to sell at a weekend market or through a small online shop. A few practicalities come with that. If you sell to consumers, the Australian Consumer Law guarantees apply to what you offer, so a zip that fails on the third use is a problem you will have to fix. An ABN becomes necessary once your turnover passes the GST threshold, and most councils want a market stall fee and a bit of public liability insurance sorted out before the day. Buying fabric from overseas adds GST and duty at the border, and imported hides need to have been treated for ticks before they arrive, which is another reason to source leather locally from Australian merchants when you can.

If you want a companion project for the same weekend, my coaster guide uses a similar small-batch rhythm, with a set of knitted coasters that gift just as well and take an evening rather than a weekend.

Every make on this blog is filmed from the first cut to the final press, so if you would rather watch than read, the video for this pouch is on the YouTube channel, with shorter clips and fabric notes posted as I go on Instagram. Subscribe to the channel or follow along on social and you will get the next project the moment it is finished, and I would love to see yours. Tell me in the comments which fabric you used for the outside and how you finished the leather edge, and I will send a photo of a finished tab your way.