Letters to Cupid – Viv’s Project Pouch

Hello, everyone! This is Luci from Sea Garden Sewing, and writing to share one of my latest quilty projects using My Mind’s Eye’s Letters to Cupid! I’ve had the pleasure of working with a few holiday collections by My Mind’s Eye, and they never fail to impress me.

For this project, I made two of Viv’s Project Pouches, created by @sew.miss.viv on Instagram. This project has a seven-part tutorial post on Aurifil’s Instagram: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7.

For the quilting, I decided on a basic diamond shape and used 12wt red thread with 50wt red thread in the bobbin. I loved the look of the chunkier thread against the fabric- it looked very striking to me!

To maintain straight lines, I used my Juki’s Quilt Guide for Even Feed Foot, which allowed me to customize my sewing distance to an inch apart. It saved me a lot of time in marking lines, which was greatly appreciated.

When sewing with vinyl, a few modifications should be taken. Firstly, a Teflon/’smooth’ foot like my Juki Smooth Presser Foot will be invaluable for you. Made to evenly feed difficult fabrics like vinyl and leather that may stick to a standard presser foot, Teflon/smooth feet are relatively inexpensive and will save you a lot of grief for this project.

For the zipper, I used a red and a pink zipper from the Lori Holt Happy Zippers 2 pack. To be honest, reattaching the zipper pull was the hardest part of the entire process!

When sewing with vinyl, a few changes should be made. Firstly, switch your needle to a larger size- something like a size 90/14 or 100/16 (denim or leather needle). Alternatively, there are such things as vinyl needles designed with an anti-adhesive coating and an extra large eye.

Here’s the side binding prior to flipping the case inside out. I used clips instead of pins for the whole project as you don’t want to perforate the vinyl. If your vinyl gets creased when flipping the pouches inside out, I’d recommend using a warm hair dryer to smooth it out.

Here are the finished pouches!

With modifications such as a Teflon/’smooth’ presser foot, larger needle size, and using clips instead of pins, I would say my foray into sewing with vinyl went very successfully! I can’t wait to store my sewing works in progress in these pouches. If you’d like to see more of my quilting projects, you can follow me on Instagram at @SeaGardenSewing.