I’ve always found a particular joy in small containers.
As a kid I had a velvety pouch for colourful glass marbles, a special box inlaid with shell for fossilised shark teeth I’d found on Bracklesham bay, and several tubes specifically for my Pogs and Slammers, with my most-loved in the best tubes. I loved containers that sorted the chaos, making space and giving permission to the little things.
As an adult I’m not much different.
Right now, the containers I love most are zipper pouches that I sew in a slow, lovely process:
- Surf around AliExpress for patches that I like and get them delivered.
- Dye the fabric. I like making these variegated, multicoloured fabrics that come together in a weird method I’ve developed that involves a jam jar, a blunt needle-nosed syringe, and the microwave.
- Spend way too long matching interior and exterior fabrics, as well as zippers. I like my dyed fabric on the outside and ready-made fabric on the inside.
- Cut the pieces out. One day I’m going to graduate from the templates I’ve cut out of old Amazon boxes to something sturdier, like a cheap plastic chopping board cut to size.
- Sew it all up. The parts that make me curse are the ironing (so much ironing, ugh) and securing the zipper without breaking your needle. But it’s all worth it when you turn your pouch the right way out and see what a nice thing you have made.
I like that they are simple to make, but never the same twice. They allow me to make progress without pressure (I often make these when I’m procrastinating bigger, scarier sewing projects.) They are a good canvas for tiny choices. And at the end you are holding something in your hands that didn’t exist before, that someone can use.
I’ve made nine zipper pouches this year, and eight were gifted. When you’re giving these pouches as a gift, you can sew a lot of good love and intention into them. I spend a lot of time thinking about the person I’m gifting to, the colours I associate with them, the patches they might like, and thinking about times I’ve spent with them while I’m sewing in a purposeful kind of nostalgia.
I use my zipper pouches to centralise the odds and ends I regret not carrying if I forget to transfer them between bags – lipbalm, a nail file, a lighter, a pen. While I am making these, I wonder what the people I gift to will do with theirs. Maybe it will contain medication. Maybe it will contain get covered in glitter and sunscreen. Maybe it will be used once and then forgotten. But whatever happens, it was a little piece of me and it served.
I am not one for sewing trinkets that gather dust. I like that usefulness can be beautiful, and that practicality and delight can coexist. And I hope that even something small that I stitch in a still moment can carry the pieces of another person’s life.
So I keep making them, over and over. It’s a quiet kind of magic. A promise that this will hold what you need.
