Point of View - Summer - Always Expect Moore

I’m so excited to be a guest poster on Point of View! This month the theme was “Summer” and the POV bloggers came up with some awesome creations!

You can check out the details on their blogs, as well as link up to the party with your own summer creations over at Leanne’s blog!

Amy from Ameroonie Designs

Jonie from Just Between Friends

Gwen from Gwenny Penny

Leanne from Organize and Decorate Everything

Michele from Michele Made M

Here in Vegas, summer means spending time at the swimming pool. But we don’t have our own pool. My motto is “The next best thing to having a friend with a pool is having your own pool.” Yes, go ahead and read that again.

Not having our own pool comes with perks – no need for maintaining it. However, it means that we have to take wet suits home from the pool. And I am not a fan of everything in the pool bag getting soggy from wet suits. So I used some fun fabrics, a zipper, and some iron-on vinyl to make a quick wet swimsuit bag.
It is not completely sealed, like a plastic bag might be, which will prevent the suits from getting super-gross if not thrown into the wash right away. But the laminated fabric will still keep everything else dry.

I started by cutting 4 pieces of fabric 15″ x 10″

I ironed on some iron-on vinyl to the two inside pieces. You can find this at any big-box craft store, or online. I just followed the directions, it was super easy to use.

After the inside pieces cooled, I pinned an outside piece and an inside piece, right sides together, with the zipper in the middle. I just lined up the right side all the way down, and kept my pins in the seam allowance so I wouldn’t poke holes in too much of the vinyl. My zipper extends out both sides, which is fine.

I stitched it together using the zipper foot on the sewing machine.

I then flipped both pieces of fabric back, exposing the zipper, and top-stitched close to the zipper.

I pinned the other two pieces of fabric onto the zipper, just like last time, this time making sure to line up the sides of the fabric so everything will fit together in the next step. I then stitched it down and top stitched just like before.

I opened up the fabric, so that the two top pieces and the two lining pieces were right sides together, with the zipper in the middle. I pinned around all four sides.

I then stitched around all four sides, leaving an opening at the bottom of the inside fabric.

Using this hole, I flipped the whole thing right side out.

I tucked in the seam allowance on the hole…

Then stitched it down. Because the fabric is laminated, it will stick to a regular sewing machine foot. If you work with a lot of laminated fabrics or vinyl, it is worth getting a Teflon foot, or at the very least getting a walking foot. I didn’t want to switch over to my walking foot, so I fed the fabric along side the zipper foot… and it worked just fine.

The stitches I just made will make the bag less water-tight, so I grabbed the protective paper from ironing on the vinyl, put some over the top and bottom, and then re-ironed it to “seal” up the holes a bit.