Orchard Path Pouch - Zakka Sew Along Week 11

Welcome to Week 11 of the Zakka Style Sew Along! I was really excited to work on the Orchard Path Tweed Pouch for the Zakka Along, in part because it included something I've been really wanting to try (EPP hexagons!!) and you can never have too many pouches :)

Unfortunately for me, in my first attempts at the pouch, I misunderstood the enlargement instructions, perhaps due to a lack of an appropriate level of caffeine.  Just in case you fall into that same boat when you make your pouch, be sure to only enlarge the pouch pattern piece - not the corners or the hexagon, those don't need enlarging.  Because if you enlarge the hexagons, they finish up around the same size as the whole pouch.  Trust me.  Want to know how I know?

LOL, I made used these "wrong" pouches as teacher gifts last week for the munchkin's two teachers, and fortunately, this is an easy-to-follow pattern that whips up really quickly, so I didn't mind having to make a third pouch.

For my third pouch, I pulled a few fun scraps for a pouch for me, using Robert Kaufman Quilter's Linen in Azure as my main pouch fabric. The pattern calls for tweed, but the only source I could find locally for tweed (Jo-Ann's) didn't have any tweed that I felt compelled to work with, so I went with (faux) linen instead. I love the look of Quilter's Linen, and I especially enjoy that it behaves like cotton when you work with it, rather than linen, which can sometimes stretch in odd ways. I did use some actual linen for the pouch corner accents, Robert Kaufman's Essex Linen in Chartreuse. For my lining, I pulled my current favorite Spoonflower find, from none other than Rashida Coleman-Hale herself - an outtake print from Washi that you can only find on Spoonflower. Isn't it adorable?

The directions for the pouch are really quite straight-forward, with the exception perhaps of the zipper instructions. If you are new to zippers or less than confident in using them, I highly recommend you follow the Kelbysews style of zipper pouch making - adding tabs to the zipper after shortening it to 1.5" shorter than the pouch itself, so in this instance, trim your zipper to 8.5", lopping off the excess on the end rather than the pull side of the zipper.

Don't forget to post a photo of your finished pouch in the Flickr pool and link it up at Lindsey's blog, LR Stitched, for a chance to win an amazing prize, some beautiful fat quarters courtesy of Art Gallery Fabrics!

Would you like to adorn your pouch with some special stitching? You can enter to win a 6-pack of gorgeous Aurifil threads, and I have five packs to give away! I adore working with Aurifil, I've started using it exclusively in the last few months and I cannot possibly recommend it enough. This giveaway will close on Friday, June 15th at 11:59pm EST and I will announce winners on Saturday.