No-Sew Crocheted Zipper Pouch

Hi, everybody. I'm ready. KB Anderson and we're gonna have a little live Q and A here today. So you guys can ask me questions about things. But I also wanted to share with you a little technique that I like to use when I make crocheted zipper pouches.

Um, or you don't actually sew your zipper into your crochet bag, you actually crochet it in which is really fun. Um, I know that people have a lot of strong feelings about zippers. Um I actually really, really love wearing the zippers, but I come from an industry where I sewed lots and lots of zippers into things. I mean, I've sewn in more than 1000 zippers probably more than that lots more than that. But, um, so I'm very used to dealing with zippers, but I also know sometimes you just don't really feel like fiddling around with that even if you know how to do it and you're ok with it.

And this is a really fun method. Just try out. Um, even if you don't mind sewing zippers in this, it's just kind of fun and it makes a really nice finish. So let me show you what it looks like here. So here I've got these three little pouches, um, and they're all made in the same way.

There's no pattern for these and I'll walk you through so that you know how to make these exact same things. Um There's no actual pattern because um, basically it's, it's just something that you can learn from just watching this. You don't have to read a pattern to do this. Um So this is what the zippers look like. They unzip and then when you look on the inside, it's all finished nicely there.

You don't even see like the little flap of the zipper. No stitching lines. Nothing. It's just a really nice transition from zipper to crocheted fabric. All right.

So that's what they look like. You could make these any size you want. Doesn't matter. It's just limited by the size of your zipper really that you choose. Um And I am also gonna be showing you how to shorten a zipper so that you can make the pouch.

Um Exactly the size that you want to. So, all right, so um oh Cheryl is already popping in and saying hello from Columbus, Ohio. Hi, Cheryl, welcome. I'm glad you're here. Um I see there's a lot of people here which is exciting.

Uh Yeah, so obviously this is a live event and I love it when you guys pop in, ask questions, say hello. Um You could tell me where you're crocheting from, you can tell me projects that you're interested in learning about or making in the future because I design lots of things for these uh creative crochet corner live events. And um so I always appreciate getting like suggestions from you guys because I want to know what you guys are interested in making. So um you can put that in the chat box too. Um Or if there's anything that's unclear you have questions about, definitely put those in there so I can answer that for you.

Also, if you just have random crochet questions that you just wanna ask me. Um I will do my best to try and answer them within our time here. Uh But yeah, go ahead and put those in the chat too and I will, I may be going back and forth between things. We'll just kind of feel it out and see how that goes. Um Otherwise I might save those till towards the end, um, and go through those questions too.

So I'm not ignoring you just in case you put your question and I don't answer it right away. Let's see. Ta Lamont is saying hello from Clarksville, Tennessee. Hello, welcome. And hello again from South Carolina.

Danielle is back. Awesome. Hello and Dana Louise is saying hello from Massachusetts. Hello, Dana, welcome. I'm glad you guys are all here.

All right. So now I did say this is a no sew project and you could definitely make this completely. No sew. So don't, don't freak out when I tell you this, but I'm gonna do a tiny bit of sewing here just to show you how to shorten a zipper. Now, there are ways to shorten a zipper where you don't need to sew at all.

Um, but this is very simple and straightforward and this is one of those things where you, I just want to show it to you because a lot of people have threaded a needle at home and they might not necessarily have a zipper stop at home. So a zipper stop. Um That's like a little usually metal piece, sometimes plastic um that you can add to your zipper to change the length of your zipper. So um the zipper stop that's already on here. Here's a stop down here.

It's just like a little metal piece that clamps over the teeth. And when you unzip your piece, it makes it stop, right. It's going to keep it from going off the edge. You have a zipper stop at the bottom and zipper stops at the top. So if you're gonna shorten a zipper, um because you can never make a zipper longer.

So I always buy at least the length that you want. If not longer. I usually just buy long zippers and I keep them on hand. Actually, that's what this bag is here. Put this here to remind me to tell you guys that um if you guys are excited about making these little pouches.

It might be worth looking into buying them in bulk because this like giant amount of zippers that I bought was about the same price as maybe like four zippers um at the fabric store. So might be worth it just depending on how many you want to make just something to look into. Um Anyway, back to the zipper stops, you can buy these little metal pieces at the fabric store and you can use them to create a new stop. Like say, I only wanted my zipper to be about five inches long. You'd measure from the top of the zip, zipped zipper measure down however long you want it to be and you can put a stop through the fabric.

It's got little prongs in it. I meant to bring one today and I just completely forgot. It's got little prongs in it. You just push them through the fabric on either side of the zipper teeth and clamp it down so that it looks just like this. So in that way, you don't have to sew anything.

You just clamp it down and then you are free to cut off the end of your zipper, which sounds a little crazy and I'm gonna show you how to cut that off, but I'm gonna use a needle and thread to make my own stop. Um This is a great way to do it. If you don't have a zipper stop or even if you do have a zipper stop, I often use thread instead of a zipper stop because I feel like if you use your thread and make a large enough zipper stop, it is very strong. Sometimes those metal stops can kind of work their way out. Um, or bend.

Um, usually they don't, but I just prefer using thread to make my zipper steps. All right. So let me see, I'm gonna make the zipper about five inches. But you, like I said, you can make it any length you want, doesn't matter up to you. Um But this is just, you know, for demonstration sake.

So I'm measuring my five inches. I'm gonna put a little line here. This is gonna be where my zipper ends and I'm gonna create a zipper stop just below that because I want my pouch to be five inches and then I want the end of the zipper to be kind of tucked down inside the pouch. Let me show you what that looks like. So see how here's the zipper running along the edge and the end of the zipper kind of rounds out and actually sticks down to about in on the inside of my bag.

Ok? You want it to be a little bit longer. If you cut it off right there, then you're gonna have this cut end of a zipper sticking out and there are ways, I mean, sometimes I make pouches where I wrap the end of my zipper in a pretty piece of like faux leather or something like that. That's a different construction method than this and it's a little bit trickier to do that. So in this way, in this case, you want your zipper to kind of wrap on down through here and kind of come a little bit lower.

So, um here's where I want my zipper to end or my pouch to end. So I am going to do some stitches about a quarter of an inch further on down towards the bottom of my zipper. So I'm using a double strand of just regular all purpose thread and a sewing needle. And I'm gonna come up from the bottom here and then I'm making a stitch straight across. I'm sorry that this thread is kind of a similar color to the purple, but I'm basically just making a, a stitch straight across, making little loops that go around those zipper teeth.

So there's one and we're just gonna do a bunch of them till you get kind of a nice ridge going on there of, of stitching. I really was planning on bringing the zipper stop so I could start with that because it is a little bit, shall we say? Embarrassing to talk about? A no. So situation, the first thing that I'm doing here is sewing, but we're not gonna be sewing our zippers into our pouches.

Don't worry, I'm not gonna break that promise to you guys? All right. So here I am stitch, ditch, ditch, ditch, ditch. And that's a nice enough that I probably went around maybe like eight times or something with a double thread. So that's gonna be plenty.

It's gonna stop my zipper just fine. Now I'm gonna hop over here a quarter of an inch away. Now most people don't do this. They call that good. That's fine.

You can nod it off if that's the way that you normally do this. If you've done this before, don't worry about it. I like to make two stops in a row. Um, just for extra durability because it keeps your zipper from splitting open down here and then you can cut it pretty close to that second stop. So I'm just hopping about a quarter of an inch or even maybe a little bit less further on down the zipper and I'm making another little line of stitches that just go across the zipper teeth here.

Let me show you what it looks like in the back. I'm just taking that little straight stitch across the bottom of the teeth down to the front. Ok. Just doing a little whip stitch here. We're just tacking it together to make sure that our zipper is not gonna open on the bottom.

All right, we've got a hello from Long Island. Hi, Annette, welcome. And we've got Sea Wolf Pack three saying, greetings from Central Pennsylvania. Hi, welcome. And hello from Kokomo.

Indiana. How do I keep the cat off the keyword? Oh, my gosh. Ok. I have a story about that.

I was sending an email once to my first book editor when I had just barely met her. I mean, met her online and my cat who loved sleeping in my lap while I was typing, he was sleeping in my lap. And here I'm just, I'm just making some knots on the back here. That's all I'm doing before I can cut my little thread, taking a little nap in my lap. And I had written this big long email and I was cutting and pasting all over the place, moving things around rereading it.

And then my cat yawned, reached out and just went poop and he sent my email because I had my cursor hovering over the send button and he just happened to hit that. So he sent this email and this is like before you could be like, oops, I didn't mean to send that. Um And I was just like mortified because I, I just met my editor and then she saw the most crazy chopped up message ever and thought, I thought, oh my gosh, she's never gonna let me write a book after that. So they sent her a message right away and it was like my cat sent that I know you don't believe me. And then we became friends because she's awesome.

Ok. So I tacked it twice right here. And now I can just go ahead and cut right through my zipper. So if you are using a zipper that has metal teeth, you can just kind of cut between those metal teeth with your, your don't use your, you know, don't use your mom's best scissors, use scissors that are kind of like craft scissors. You can cut through some stuff.

It's probably not gonna hurt your scissors, but it might, it could possibly dull them a little if you're cutting between those metal pieces. Um You know, so you don't, you don't wanna use, you know, your fancy dress making shears for that. So if you're using a plastic zipper like this, especially a very small teeth, I've got really tiny teeth here. Um, and a nylon zipper, you can just sip right through and not, don't worry about it. I'm just cutting about a quarter of an inch away from that.

All right. So then, um, then you can take a lighter and because most zipper tape is made out of a synthetic and that will melt. So you can keep it from fraying. So we're just gonna melt the very edge of that zipper. So it's not gonna go anywhere just melting the tape and then we're ready to go.

So we have our little zipper ready to go. So this would be the exact same process. If you got a bottom stop, that was metal, you'd put it right here. Um And you'd be good to go, just cut off the bottom, melt the bottom. Um If maybe you are wondering, hey, Brenda, could I just buy a zipper?

That's exactly the right size. You totally can. The only thing with that is a lot of zippers. Now, this one does not, this would be like the perfect zipper to use, but a lot of the zippers that you find at like the fabric store have this little plastic that's kind of been bonded to the bottom of your zipper to keep it really sturdy to make it easier for you to stitch through and get your zipper hooked and all that kind of stuff. Usually there's this really thick plasticky thing right down here at the bottom of your zipper.

So you're gonna have to poke a little hole in there with an a or like start with a smaller needle and then use a yarn needle to poke a hole because you're gonna have to be able to fit a very small crochet hook through the hole in the tape. So as it is now, this kind of tape is perfectly fine for putting this little crochet hook through. You'll see maybe, you know, maybe you don't believe me, but I'll show you. Um, but if you get the kind of zipper that's exactly the right length you want it to be. And then it has that hard plastic thing, you, it might be a little bit frustrating because you have to deal with the hard plastic things.

So it's a l it's better. I recommend to get a zipper a little longer than what you need if you've got that hard plastic thing especially and then trim it down so that you don't have that hard plastic bottom, um, to deal with. All right. So here's our adorable little purple zipper and we are going to begin by just crocheting into our zipper tape. Now, I had this thought a couple of months ago, maybe I did a live tutorial on adding some lace to the edge of a pillowcase.

And as I was doing that, I was thinking, I'm crocheting right into the fabric. I'm starting my crochet right from the fabric. I wonder if I could do that on a zipper. So I googled it and I'm like, oh other people are doing this too. So I looked at a bunch of other people's tutorials and tried some different things out and then I came up with my own method which is similar to some of the ones that I saw, but I've got some tips.

Um and I just have like certain way that I like to do it. Now, this is my favorite way, but just know that there are lots of other ways out there in case this doesn't work for you. Um This isn't the only way to add a zipper into your crochet piece. All right. So I am gonna be working with this this is a sea hook, which is a 2.755 millimeter hook.

You're gonna need a small enough hook and hopefully it's a little bit pointy on the end. This is the Clover Amo hook. These are my absolute favorite hooks in the whole world. Um And these were great, but it needs to be sharp enough here, not sharp but like pointy enough here that you can poke it through fabric. It needs to be small enough that you can get it through the fabric, but it has to be large enough to pull your yarn through.

Now, if you're having this problem, you're like, oh, I can't get, I can't get this little tiny. If I, if I use a small enough hook, I can't get it to, you know, grab onto my yarn. This is working just fine for me, the sea hook. But if you're having a lot of problems with that, you can use a skinnier yarn or um you know, something lighter weight than this to put the initial round of stitches on and then you can switch to a bigger hook and bigger yarn. Um, after that.

So my process, the way I do it is I use the skinny little C which is a 2.75 millimeter hook to pull up my stitches and make my first round. And then after that, I end up switching because I'm using worst of weight yarn. I end up switching to a G hook, which is a four millimeter hook, which is a hook that I really like using for kind of a, uh, you know, like a tighter gauge, not super tight but tight enough gauge that it's a little bit firm, it's not super flat. It has a little bit of body to it. Um, with a worsted weight yarn, you can definitely do this with other weights of yarn.

I would not use a larger weight of yarn than a worst weight unless you switch to that later after you do the initial round in something worse way or thinner, if that makes sense. Ok. We've got a question here. Let's see. Question.

What do you do with the rest of the zipper that you're not using? Is there some way to repurpose or reuse it? That's a good question. So you can buy extra top stops and you can slide those on. Um But you, I think you have to slide them on from the bottom.

I'm trying to remember. It's been a long time since I've done that on this type of zipper. Um If you do, you could take out this bottom slide, the top stop on and you can reuse your, you know, you can keep using this zipper tape and in fact, they sell zipper tape just by the yard. You can just buy a whole bunch of it. You can buy bottom stops, you can buy top stops, make your own bottom and top stops.

Um, but yeah, really, this does seem kind of wasteful because this is a very long. So it'd be better if you're just gonna be making these small pouches like this to buy a shorter zipper and only get rid of just a little bit. Um, you know, like an inch or two if you needed to. You can also look, you know, like I was saying before, that plasticky and that thick plasticky and that's not on all the zippers so you could find a zipper that is just the right length that doesn't have that thick plastic. I just wanted to give you that little warning about the plastic.

So you knew to look for that when you were buying your zipper because it would be very frustrating to try this with that thicker plastic. If you didn't already know that you're gonna have to take some extra steps. Um But yeah, you can um I would recommend just going to find the length that you want if you're worried about wasting stuff or uh you know, look into getting a new top stop, you can buy extra or not top stops. Um Slider, sorry, I wonder if I was saying the wrong thing, the slider or the pull of the zipper. So here's the pull this little part, that's what you pull on.

And then the slider is the part that actually hooks those teeth together. So you'd need a little slider and a pull. Um, you can buy those separately, but you have to also make sure that that's gonna go with the size of your zipper. There's all different kinds of zippers. It might get a little confusing.

So you might have to do a little bit of internet research before you know, which poles to buy to go with, with, you know, the zipper that you have. All right. I hope that answered your question. That was a good question. Um OK, so to start, um I make a round of single crochet where I just stitching across here, across there across here.

Actually, I'm gonna start by this pull and I'll show you why later, I'm gonna start on this end, go across here and then across this way to make my first round, we're going on both sides. Um And I am gonna be using this worsted weight yarn and I find for me that when I use worse weight yarn with a G size hook, my stitches are about a quarter of an inch. Um So there's about four stitches per inch. In other words. So what that means is when I do my initial stitches, I want to place them about every quarter of an inch if you're like, ugh, Brenda, I don't know how many stitches per inch I have.

I just want to make this zipper pouch. This is just annoying. Um You can go ahead and you can put them every quarter of an inch, you can, if you're not good at eyeballing these kinds of things, you can mark it with the ruler just this for the first time that you do this just, you know, make sure they're about a quarter of an inch apart. And then later when we switch to our bigger hook, you will use whatever hook you need to, to make your gauge stay constant and to give you the right amount of um width in your pouch, you can switch up your hook. Um like maybe you crochet a little bit looser than me.

So then you would use a smaller hook to get your fabric to be about the same gauge as mine if that makes sense. And this is definitely not a science. This is much more of an art. This is sort of like, oh, I feel like I could probably fit another stitch in there and then you do, it's that kind of project. Um I wanted to make sure that um people would be able to do this with all kinds of things, with all, all kinds of wear weights and, you know, different zipper situations and all that.

So it's kind of um sort of uh generic instruction on how to do this. All right. So we're gonna start just a little bit in front of where the top of our zipper pull is. So here's the top of our zipper pull. I'm gonna go in just right about here.

Maybe about a quarter of an inch beyond that. And I'm going to poke my hook through the fabric. And I'm, what I'm aiming for is somewhere between this edge of the tape and this edge of the tape, like right in the middle. I'm gonna draw a dot There. So you can hopefully see that.

So right there, that's what I'm aiming for. Um It's a little bit beyond where the top of our stop is we're just gonna poke our hook right through there. So you don't have to hold the yarn. I don't know why I'm doing that. I just can't not hold yarn apparently.

So I'm, I'm just pressing the zipper tape on between my thumb and the hook and then I'm going to kind of turn my hook and put the point down and poke it through my fabric like that. Ok. And you might be thinking, oh, we're making holes in our zipper tape. How is that not gonna rip out Brenda? Well, I didn't believe it at first, but what you're actually doing is you're moving the threads aside.

You're not actually tearing through your threads. That's what you, you don't wanna tear through threads, you don't wanna have um a bunch of little thread ends poking out. You're just popping through in between. It's like here's the threads in your fabric and you're just going blink right in between them. Um Just you just making a little space for that hook then you're gonna yarn over and you're gonna pull up a loop through that same hole right there and it looks like I caught just a little bit of the purple thread.

So I'm gonna back my hook out. This happens sometimes and this is just part of, part of the deal. Um, I got one little thread sticking out. There we go. OK.

I'm gonna pull it with my fingers. That'll help. There it is. Ok. So there's our first loop and we're just going to basically yarn over and pull through just to kind of chain one and anchor it.

Ok. That's not gonna count as a stitch. It's not gonna count as anything. We just basically anchored our yarn. Now we're gonna go back through that same hole and this is the trickiest one because there's already, you know, yarn in there.

So you, you want to make sure that you're not going to catch more yarn, you're just catching that one yarn over. So you're gonna pull up another strand of yarn through that same spot just like that. And what I'm doing is I'm kind of pulling it up to the height of the edge of that zipper tape. So it's tall enough, then we're gonna yarn over and pull through two and that's gonna be our first single crochet right there. So we already started now.

No turning back. Um, ok. So after that, we're gonna place about every quarter of an inch. We're gonna poke a hole with our sea hook. I like this.

Poke, grab that yarn, pull it up and elongate that loop till it's about the length of your, you know, to, till you can make your stitch on top of the edge of that, of that zipper tape. I'm gonna yarn over and pull through both stitches there. Now, we have two single crochets. So we're just gonna keep doing this all the way across our piece. It's like that and the way that I know I'm not actually cutting through my strands is that after I make a hole, if I'm like, oops, I didn't like that.

See how you can see that little hole there, but you can actually make the hole go away when you do that. See it's gone, move my threads around. Um So that's how, you know, you're not just like ripping holes through your fabric, you're just kind of pushing them to the side so your yarn can get through. So this is a very similar technique to that, you know, making a little lace edging on the edge of a pillowcase, like I was saying before, um you're just using your crochet hook to kind of pop, pop through and grab that yarn and make that um initial single crochet stitch along the edge. So the thing you have to watch out for is you want to make sure you are not making these stitches too tightly.

So what I mean by that. Ok. So first of all, this part of the stitch that needs to be long enough, you got to pull that up. So till it's at the top of your tape. So you're not squishing your tape down.

OK? It's not the worst thing in the world. It just looks a little Tidier if you allow it to be tall enough. The other thing you want to look at is this loop across the top here. If you're making that too tight, your zipper is gonna start doing this, it's gonna start getting smaller and smaller.

And the reason is because we are using this very small hook with this worsted weight yarn and we're putting your stitches kind of, you know, we're spacing them to about where we would have them if we were stitching with a larger hook. So we need to intentionally allow that stitch to be a little longer to make it over to the next stitch. So I'm kind of stitching a little loosely is I guess what I'm trying to say in a roundabout way. Um So that way when you make that stitch the top of your stitch, and actually, I think I may put that a little further along than I wanted to. We're gonna erase that little hole there.

Um This can be a little bit longer here and then you go in, you still want to be about a quarter of an inch away from your last stitch. And that way, you're gonna make sure that you're not making this too tight. If it's ever so slightly tight and doing this just a little bit. It's ok because on the next round, when you make your next row of stitch, stitches around there, it's gonna even it out and it's gonna pull it flat. Um, you just don't want to set it here and have it go, uh, you know, and curve around to the side because I don't think you can fix that with another round of stitches.

That would be sad. All right. So we're gonna keep placing our hook about a quarter of an inch away from the last place we popped it through. We're trying to center the hole between the edges, you know, the edge of the tape and the teeth and we are just trying to be vigilant about making our stitches, you know, tall enough and wide enough so that we are not distorting our zipper. Ok.

So that's what it looks like so far, we're just gonna continue right over towards the end and I'll show you how we get around to the other side. So zipper tapes are not all the same. Some zipper tapes may be harder to pierce through than others. So if you are shopping for zipper specifically for this project and you're somewhere where you can feel the zipper with your hand, um If the tape feels a little bit thinner and a little more flexible that would be a good one to start with until you get the hang of this, the thicker tapes. That may be a little bit harder to poke through with your crochet hook.

Um, I've done it on some fairly heavy tapes and it seems fine, but for your first, for your first go at it, try to find one that's a little bit, um, easier to pierce through. I mean, obviously you don't want to stand there at the fabric store poking holes in the tape. I don't know. I don't know if this one's gonna work, but, um, you know, you can kind of just feel it with your fingers and see how tight the weave is there, but probably most zippers if it's a lighter, lighter teeth, like these are nylon. Um, and you know, if you're using something that's like a, um, let's see, what do they call that spiral zipper?

I can't remember, but it's got little skinny, um, these skinny little nylon things instead of thicker, separate plastic teeth. Um, a lot of times these kinds of zippers, they're kind of for lightweight clothes. A lot of times for lightweight clothes, they'll have a lighter weight, um, tape on it. The, the, the fabric part is a little bit lighter weight. All right.

So we've gotten almost to where our top stops are or, I mean, our bottom stops right here are those thread stops? We made, I'm gonna make one more stitch right here. I wonder if I should do two. Let me look at it. Hm.

I'm gonna do, yeah, I'll just leave it there. I'm, I, I'm ok with the zipper being just a tiny bit shorter than I plant. Like my pouch being just a tight, like it's like an eighth of an inch really narrower. That's no big deal. Ok.

So now we're going to start working on this side. And so if you wanted a zipper to be flat in your project like this, you could make a couple of chains to get yourself over to the other side and it would remain flat, but we are making a little pouch here and I want this end of the zipper to go inside and I really wanted it to be I I don't want to leave a hole there. What happens if you do this? Um I've seen in some zipper tutorials. People make chains across here to get over to this side, then you end up having this little hole here and sometimes the end of your zipper can pop up out of that hole.

So I do not like that. So we are leaving it as is we're not going to make any changes to go across for this particular project. But if you are using this technique and you want, if you're placing a zipper in the middle of some like say your pouch was flat like this, um or your pouch was flat, your zipper was like, ok, let's imagine this. Imagine the zipper is not here. Ok?

And then you have a zipper right here in the middle of your pouch, like on this flat surface, then you might have to do a couple of chains here and go across to the other side. Then if that little gap is bothering you, if, if anything happens with there, you might have to tack just a little bit on either side of the zipper teeth, you might have to just tack that down so that there isn't going to be a little hole there for this end to flip out. Um But because we're making these little pouches where the zipper sits on top and then we have the little end of the zipper poke down into there. We are just gonna hop straight over here and come back this way. I know that sounds crazy because how are we gonna make a stitch way over there?

We're gonna allow this to curve this way, which is the opposite of how it's going to be when we're done, but that's OK. Just trust in it. Um So what we're trying to do is you're gonna make a hole that's opposite from the zipper from where you just stitched. So here's our little hole hole right here. We're gonna put another little hole right there.

OK? And then we're gonna work across the opposite way. So just allow your zipper to come toward you like that, that's perfectly fine. See how I'm keeping this, um, strand behind my hook and then we're gonna poke it through on that little hole. You aren't over, pull up our loop and yarn over and pull through two.

So that might look bunchy and weird now, but it's ok, it's gonna be fine. And then we're gonna create the same exact thing where we're working po poking our hook through about every quarter of an inch along our zipper here. So this quarter of an inch thing, this is just because that's about the gauge that um I, I use my, where my worsted weight, single crochet, stitches are about that far apart. So if you are working something up, that's like maybe you're working it in a crochet thread and it's much thinner than this. Um You can put your stitches a little bit closer together through your tape.

You can also let your first round of stitches be a little bit large and then you can add extra stitches in the next round till it's the size that you want it to be. There's lots and lots of different options, different ways to make sure that this is going to work for you. Um Another thing is if you're like, oh, I don't know how far apart my stitches are going to be like, that's how will I know that um you can make the bag first? So imagine I made this little pouch here and I did not put the zipper in. You can make the bag first and then you can look at where your, your stitches are lining up.

And then when you get your zipper out, you can be like, oh they, they need to be about that far apart and you can draw a little dot at the root of each stitch, poop, poop, poop, poop. So you'll know for next time you can start with that. But also for this time after you've crocheted your pouch, you can do one round of what I'm doing here and then you can use your yarn needle and yarn yarn tail to whip stitch the crocheted fabrics together. So that is technically sewing. Yes.

But it isn't really sewing a zipper in because you've already attached the zipper to your crochet fabric. So it makes it a little bit easier. Ok. Let's see. Oh, Sea Wolf Pack is appreciating my uh concern about being eco conscious and not just throwing away large zipper parts.

Yes. Dana Louise is saying that it's interesting how you do that. Yeah, this is a, such a fun technique and, and I don't know, there's just something like, I don't know, I really enjoy sewing and I like putting zippers in, but sometimes I just wanna crochet and so I'm sure I'm not the only one and I know that some people don't really like to sew, you know, or they don't really like to sew zippers in because that's just a whole another thing. Um So this is just a fun technique to, to know and have up your sleeve in case you need to put a zipper in and you just don't really feel like it. All right.

So, let's see here. I lost my, lost my loop. There it is. OK. I'm getting close to the end.

So I did not count my stitches. I have not done that on any of these pouches. I just kind of wing it and put my stitches about a quarter of an inch around and really it turns out fine. I don't know. I if you are newer crochet and you are not very confident in the evenness of your stitching, then, you know, definitely mark your where you're gonna poke your, your hook through first before you do this.

Um And that will help you, you know, to kind of stay on track and make sure you have a fairly even amount of stitches on both sides of your, of your pouch. All right. So here we've made it all the way to the end. Now, we are going to start working across here. And again, same thing if you ended up, you know, if you want your zipper to remain flat and not um be on the top edge of a pouch like this.

If you want it to be flat in your piece, you will have had to chain across to make enough space to get over to this side, you'll have to do that. Of course, over here too. So maybe one or two chains across there. But we are putting this into our pouch and I don't want to leave a big gap there. I want that to be nice and tight and closed in.

So what we're gonna do is we're just going to allow this to come together here and it's gonna look inside out at first and that's OK. And we are going to make, we're not switching our hook yet. We're going to in a minute, but we're gonna make a single crochet, stitch into the very first single crochet that we made, which was right here. So that was the first, the top of the first single crochet. So we're gonna just put our hook right under there and allow these two to come towards each other.

You even wanna pull on that strand to make sure there isn't a big long loop or a gap between the two because you want those stitches to be close to each other and you're gonna yarn over and pull through and yarn over and pull through two to complete that first single crochet. Now I'm gonna switch to my larger hook, so I elongated that loop just so it would stay there for a minute. And now I'm just gonna single crochet into each stitch around. And so when you do this, I mean, I already know I'm using a G hook because I've done this a bunch of times. I know about how far apart I put those stitches and what makes sense for me to get the right gauge, um, to make it match up is a G hook here.

But if you are doing this and you know, people don't all crochet the same if you spaced yours quarter of an inch. And as you start stitching this, let's just say, I'm gonna purposely make my stitches really tight. Let's just say, as you're stitching this as you get along, you start to notice that your zipper is rippling, like see how there's kind of like a little bulge there. I should have started this tight crochet on the other side. This might not be tight enough, but it's starting to get all wonky.

It feels like it wants to do this. That means you need to go up a hook size in order to make this work out. If you go up a hook size and you're like, oh, I don't like that because the stitches are too far apart. Then instead of ripping all this out and starting over, you can just add some extra stitches here and there until as you're stitching along, it just seems to be a constant size. You know, your rectangle side should be, you know, parallel and even, and it shouldn't start to like cup or ripple or do anything weird there.

But I already know that this G hook is good for me. I think it will probably be good, a good place for a lot of you to start. Um Because I get just as many people saying, wow, your gauge is really loose compared to mine. Um And then also, wow, your gauge is really tight compared to mine. I get about the same amount of comments on those things.

So I'm just sort of assuming my gauge is pretty average. Um So I think it's a good place for most people to start. If they don't already have an idea. If you know that you're a tight crocheter, then you may want to try this with an H hook or an I hook or something instead for your first go at it to see if that works better. All right.

So at this point, see how, when we're crocheting around, eventually we can pop this thing out the other way. Well, I'll wait until I get a little further along on that edge of things. But, so I mean, what you're watching for here, like I said is if it starts to ripple or pucker, pucker or do weird things change your hook size. So that way it makes your stitches so that they are as wide apart as that first round of uh single crochets that you did into the zipper. Well, let's see, Ronnie is saying you have to have the same number of stitches on each side.

You should have something similar and it wouldn't hurt to, you know, if you, if you marked them out on your zipper, then you would know if you have the same amount on each side. I don't do that because I'm fairly regular with my gauge, my tension and I've done this a lot of times. Um, so I don't, you know, and I'm sure sometimes I'm off by a stitch or maybe two sometimes. But, and it doesn't seem to really matter that much because I don't know, it just kind of all blocks out and it looks ok, but it wouldn't hurt to check and make sure you have the right amount of stitches. If you put the same amount of dots on your tape before you start, if you measured it out, then you'll have the same amount of stitches as you go around.

Um, and it should not be a problem. But you can also, if you're like, well, I didn't mark that when I first started. You can also, after you go along one side, then you can mark the second side or you can count as you go. If you're like a pretty, pretty regular stitcher, I can do this. So maybe on your, maybe after you do the first side, you count up those stitches and you're like, ok, so when I get halfway to here, you know, halfway across, I should have half the amount of stitches that I had on the first side and just have like a little checkpoint so you can kind of make those fit.

That's another thought too just to make sure that it's working out. All right, I'm gonna show you next how I like to change color. Um because I have a little, little thing I like to do so that I don't get a big jog in color. And if you're interested, there are on the creative crochet corner website. There is a video all about like three different approaches to changing color when working in the round and you're working in single crochet with some different ideas.

Um This is one sort of spin off version of one of those. There's lots and lots of different ways to do it. Um But this is, this is the way that I like to do it most of the time. Let's see when I get around here, I'm gonna switch to the my next color. So at this point, I'm gonna just go ahead and flip my zipper so that it's going the right way and this would be another time, you know, you can check and see if something weird is happening if it's doing this.

That means your stitches are too tight. You need a bigger hook or you need to add some stitches. If your stitches are like ruffling like doing this and it wants to bend this way. That means you have too many stitches or your stitches are too wide. Um So you need to fix it one way or the other.

OK, we've almost reached the end. So when you're about to stitch before you want to change color, what I do is I do a little slip stitch here with the same color. There is my lip stitch. And then the next stitch is where I'm actually going to slip, uh switch color. So I will insert my hook underneath that back loop of the next stitch and then I'm going to grab the next color and I'm just gonna pull up a loop, pulling through the stitch, pulling through the loop on the hook.

Then I'm gonna chain one to kind of anchor it. And now I'm gonna work into that same stitch again, but going through both loops and I'm gonna do a single crochet. So here's, that's the front loop. There's the back loop I already worked through. So I'm just gonna insert through there and I think I'm going to crochet over this new color too to get rid of that yarn tail.

So there's my first single crochet of the next round. All right. So we're just gonna keep working in this new color. Yeah. Um So Sea Wolf Peck is wondering, she says, if not using a lining, wouldn't it be better to crochet with a yarn under to keep the fabric from being too holy and loose?

You certainly could crochet do a yarn under. That is a really awesome stitch to do. It's exactly the same as a single crochet with a yarn over. So this is a yarn over. See how the yarn is coming across the front of my hook, a yarn under would be you're bringing your yarn under so you can grab that like this.

And what that does is it sort of changes, it changes your fabric just ever so slightly. It makes it a little bit tighter. A lot of times people use this when they are working on amateur roomy projects to make sure that you don't have like holes between your stitches. Um You can absolutely do that. That's a great idea.

This to the, to me though, the single crochet is pretty darn solid. I mean, I'll show you like it's, it's pretty darn solid and I, I wanted to use a stitch pattern that everyone was like, really familiar with. Um just so that you could, you won't have any like you don't have to jump through another hurdle to le learn another thing, but it sounds like uh see Wolfpack already knows how to do that. So I, I say you should go for it. It would be a really nice stitch in this um in this project to have that make it a nice sturdy fabric.

Um Yeah, it would look really cute. All right. So I'm gonna show you what happens when I get back to the beginning and let me know you guys if you guys have any questions um about any of this. But also if you're just wondering, you know, maybe you're working on a project and having a hard time with something or you just have other crochet wonders that you would like to ask. Um, definitely put those in the chat and I can try and answer them during this because we'll have a little bit of time.

Yeah. All right. So, here we are coming around back to the beginning where we switched our color and here is our last stitch. Now, it might look like there's another stitch here, but that's not actually another, another stitch. Wait, hold on.

Yep. So this is our slip stitch that we did. That was the last stitch of that color before we switch to the next color. So we're gonna create, we're gonna make our single crochet into that slip stitch and then we are going to join to the top of this single crochet. So now I haven't joined at all in these bags so far.

I don't usually join things, especially if there's um I don't know, I don't usually join my, my projects worked in the round because I don't really like how it looks when it's joined, but that's just a personal preference thing. Um But there are certain places where I do need to join and that I do, I do on purpose join because it's like a change of color and then it helps it. Um It helps there not be so much of a jog there. OK. So here's our last single crochet.

We're gonna come over here and work a single crochet or the slip stitch, sorry into that very first single crochet we made and we're gonna make that nice and tight because we're gonna, we're trying to bridge this little gap here that was caused when we switched colors. So we're gonna go in there. I'm pulling on this right now to make this loop nice and tight so we can bring them close together poop like that. OK. So that looks pretty good.

Now, we're gonna chain one and we're gonna single crochet into the same stitch. And then this time when we work all the way around, we can just continue in a spiral. We don't have to join anymore. We can even though we did that little chain one, it just helped us to get started for this next round. Um If you wanted to, you don't have to chain one at the beginning of this round.

After you do that little slip stitch join, you can make a single crochet directly into that same stitch instead of chaining one first. Um It just gets a little bit tricky because you're, you're um your stitch doesn't have really enough height yet, but you can, I do that sometimes too. Um I add that little chain in there just to make it a little bit easier to get that first stitch in and I'll show you when we get to the end here. Um What I mean about just continuing. So you may have seen me earlier.

I had to tuck this little. Oh yeah, it popped out again. So these little ends are going to continue to pop out unless you do something about that. Um, especially since that is where your pouch opens. There's really nothing you can do to just keep them inside there unless you tack them down.

So we're gonna do that and I'll show you what that looks like in just a little bit here. So if that's been bugging, you don't worry, it's been bugging me too and we are going to fix it because that's just what you gotta do here. Um Let's see, Ronnie is asking how would you go about putting in a lining? So if you wanted to add like a fabric lining, I'm assuming you mean it like a fabric lining to this, you can go ahead and lay this down on your fabric, you can fold over your fabrics, so your fold line is here and then you can just trace your piece all the way around. Um And then cut it out with a little bit of seam.

Now it's here and here. Ok. So imagine you've got your fold line here and then you've got a line here on each side and a little bit of seam allowance, right? And seam allowance up here too, then you can go ahead and stitch these two seams and try it in your bag just to make sure that it's a good size. Normally I find that, you know, normally when you make a lining for something you make it just a teensy weensy but smaller.

So it fits in there with crochet a lot of times I make it the same exact size and then I kind of stretch the crochet out just a little to fit so that it's nice and smooth. Instead of um looking a little loose over the lining, it's kind of hard to explain, but it depends on the materials you're working with and all that stuff. You can always make another little stitch line a little further in. If you feel like your lining was too big, then you're gonna slip it to the inside of your pouch and your lining. Let me open this up.

Your lining will be the the seam allowance to your lining will be touching the inside of your bag, right? So when you stitch those two lines in your lining, oh, let me draw you a picture actually. Here we go. OK. So here is your lining and you went do do do, do, do, do, do, do do with some stitches like that.

So you have this is all steam allowance over here and over here, this is your fold right there, the fold on the bottom and then here's about where your pouch comes up to. Ok. Write that, that line so you can have a little excess up here. So you've already stitched that you can slip, that you don't turn it inside out. You just keep it this way, slip it inside of your pouch.

You can, you can trim down your corners if you find that helpful here or you can just kind of fold them out of the way, um, slip it inside of here. And yes, where this, these stitches are, your seam allowances are going to need to fold this way or fold the other way or you can split them in half and fold one each way doesn't really matter. Um As long as you're consistent to get it to fit in there, right? Because your pouch is only this wide, it's not as wide as this. So those sea hor are gonna have to just be folded.

Then when you get your pouch in or you get your lining inside there, you're gonna have that excess fabric here and you can fold that underneath, fold the raw edge of your fabric toward the inside of your pouch. And then just do like a little slip stitching here. I'm assuming, since you're asking about fabric lining that you're ok with sewing that and that you would be ok with doing a little slip stitch here. Um, otherwise, I mean, this is an interesting idea and I've never tried this, but it might be interesting to see what happens if you crochet through your lining at the same time as you crochet through your zipper tape, like you'd have to have your lining going in this direction. And then you do that first round of, of zipper tape going through that and your lining fabric, then you can fold your lining fabric in here.

So your lining fabric fabric would come from this part and fold back around. That might be an interesting experiment if you're up for that. Um If you really don't like sewing things, uh But you do have to sew these two sides of your fabric for the lighting. There's no getting around that. I hope that was helpful.

All right. So here we are at the very end of our round, there's our last stitch. There was our chain one is right here. Let me do this out of the way. Uh Sorry, the chain one is right here.

There is the top of our stitch right there and then we can go ahead and just start working in single crochet. You don't need to join at this point. You can if you want to. But I find if you make that stitch a little tight right there. It brings it nicely together and it transitions your, you know, it transitions into the next round, nice and smoothly and then you can just keep stitching around until you need to change color again.

And you can do that in exactly the same method. So for this bag, I made I made one ahead of time. Check it out. I added a little stripe of pink after I, I changed to the blue. Um, in the same exact method I still changed in the same way.

And then I'm gonna show you how to close up the bottom. So of course you can do this in lots of different ways. Um Oh, it looks like there is another question here. Oh, no new. Oh, I just realized there's no yarn marker for the start and end of a round for some of us.

That could be terrifying since we rely on that to make sure we didn't miss stitches and our need to count them. OK. So this is up to you. Whether you wanna put one in the beginning or end of the round. If you wanna count your stitches every time, then that would be a great way to keep track of how many stitches you have for me because, and I should, I'm glad that you brought this up because for me, when I weren't making these pouches, I don't worry about how many stitches I have.

As long as I put one stitch into each stitch around, I am not worried about where my rounds end. When you work in single crochet, you can see that your stitches as they stack up, they start veering over to the side. Like before here, this stitch is way over by the side and as we stack up our stitches and keep going around. It ends up way over here. So I like to make all my color changes along that fold.

So to me, as I'm stitching, I just go around and around and around and around and right before I get to the fold, like say here I am and I want to switch to another color. I would just be like, OK, this is about to my fold line, we'll do one more stitch here and this is right before my fold line, fold line, meaning the very side edge of my bag. And then I could just go in there, make that last slip stitch and then change to my next color in this stitch. And not even caring that I have maybe done like four or five extra stitches in that round to get over to this corner to make up for the fact that everything just starts shifting further and further to the right because of just, it's just the nature of single crochet worked in the round. That's just how it is.

Um So for this project because I um you know, I, I don't normally skip stitches. I, I'm pretty good about not skipping stitches. I do not use any stitch markers. I just go around and around and then when I'm at the corner, that's where I change color. And then when I'm at the corner, that's also where I stop and end up, you know that I'm gonna close off the bottom at this point.

Um But I have to end just basically, I just fold this flat and I'm like, that's a good spot to stop and then I will just stitch across there. But it is a very good suggestion to use a stitch marker for the beginning of your round and know how many stitches you have in that very first round. Because then if something goes wrong, you could, you could say to yourself, ok, is my gauge off or am I just missing stitches somehow? Then you could count your stitches and find out if your piece is going in. If it's because you're missing stitches somehow or if it's because your gauge really is getting tighter and tighter.

So it's, you know, it's a good, it's a good practice, especially for those who are not used to looking at exactly where, you know, if, if you can't just look at this and know, oh, that's where I put my hook. That's where I put my hook. Um, if it isn't obvious, then it is good for a couple of, you know, at least a few rounds till it's obvious to you where that hook goes. Um, to make sure you have the same amount of stitches. And also when you're changing color over here, it can get a little muddy in your mind as to what is a stitch and what was just a chain one, to, to know how many stitches you're supposed to do right at that, you know, for the last couple of stitches before you do your join or whatever you're doing to change your color.

It would be good to have another checkpoint to have, you know, a, a stitch marker in there just so that you can say, OK, I'm gonna count out my stitches and I know this is where I stopped and this is where I start with my next round. So I hope that that helps. That was a good suggestion. OK. And Ronnie's saying the lion lighting info was helpful.

Good. OK. Um How would you go about? OK. And I answered that one.

OK. All right. Excellent. OK. So we're gonna do the very last finishing up step.

So you could just cut this yarn fasten off and then you could whip stitch it closed. Uh That would be a good way to do it. But if we're, you know, the theme here is we're avoiding sewing so you can just go ahead and slip stitch this closed. So what I do to start slip stitching, I do one little changes just kind of get my hook away from my project just a little bit. And then I'm able to go into this first stitch here and I like to insert my hook underneath the front loop of the row in front and the back loop of the row and back.

So, what I'm doing basically is I'm ignoring the two loops that are right next to each other, touching in the middle. You can certainly go through all of the loops. You can go right through this stitch and then through this stitch, that would be perfectly fine. See how there's two loops here, there's two lips here and you can make your slip stitch. That's fine.

The reason that I like to go through the front loop and then the back loop and then do my slip stitch is just because it makes a little bit less of a bulky seam there, but it's perfect, you know, it's perfectly fine to do either way. The other way makes a nice, a very sturdy seam. It makes a little bit more of a ridge on the bottom. It's really just personal preference. It's really not anything more than that.

So I am just picking up a loop from in the front and picking up the back loop from the, the row behind and making a slip stitch right there just to close this up. Ok. So you'll just do that all the way across and then you can weave in your ends um and finish that up. The one very last thing I wanted to show you is what to do about these little guys that wanna pop out. Ok.

So, like I said before, these things are just, they're just gonna pop out unless you do something about that. So we need to fix that situation and I'm just gonna use a yarn needle and thread this yarn. This is my beginning yarn tail. So this is a good reason not to bury that right away. Like sometimes we crochet over our yarn tails just so we don't have to weave them in as much later.

I would leave the very first yarn tail when you first add your yarn, just leave it hanging in there and leave it, you know, at least six inches or so. So you have enough room to do this. Then you can take the two little zipper pieces and kind of pull them down and stack them right on top of each other here. I'll move my thumbs out of the way. I'm gonna turn this upside down for me.

What we're doing is we're just laying them right on top of each other. They're not, they're not twisting or anything. They're just laying flat on top of each other. So both of the, the ends are pointing down into the bag. I'm gonna flip this out a little bit, then you can take this yarn tail and just do a couple little stitches to tack it.

Ok. So you can just poke it through. If I had a slightly smaller yarn needle, I could get it right through here, but needed a little oomph there. But if you can get your crochet hook through, you should be able to get a yarn needle through. Um, so you're just gonna make a little stitch here.

And I like to make stitch across the bottom. So I'm just grabbing a little bit of that crochet fabric that's in the same color and then going up through my zipper. And if this, if this is difficult, you can also go down through the zipper and you can also go through the same hole that you've already pierced through. Um, if that's helpful too, it doesn't matter if you make a second hole. So there's a little stitch right there and then I'm gonna do one more on this side.

So I'm gonna grab a little on the side and go through and, and actually, if these are, if you're finding these very hard to pierce through, you can poke through one zipper, um, layer first and poke through the other, that'll make it a lot easier. Actually, um, instead of trying to go through two held together because that's, that can be a little bit difficult. All right. And then you just weave in your ends there because you need to make sure that they're not going to unravel. I just wanna make sure I answered everybody's questions.

Looks like I'm all caught up. So we have this back and forth and then I'll show you what it looks like on the outside. Ok. So now those ends are not gonna flip out anymore because we tacked them down and when we zip it closed, it'll stay nice and scar and there it is our beautiful little zipper pouch where we didn't have to sew in that pesky zipper. All right.

Well, I have enjoyed this. Um I hope that you guys got all your questions answered and I look forward to talking to you guys at our next Q and A. Thank you guys so much for joining me. It was nice to chat with you the chat box. Bye.