100 zippers

Back in early 2009, I decided that it was time for me to face my fear of zippers and ordered an assortment of 100 zippers from one of those “Buy now” stores on EBay. The online picture showed a rainbow of colours, so imagine my surprise when I opened the package and the colours were totally off. No oranges, hardly anything qualifying as red or proper blues or greens, just very, very light or very, very muddy colours, but hey, at least I had loads of them.

The zippers were shoved into a shelf to be forgotten, and a couple of years later I purchased another batch from an Etsy shop. This time I could pick and choose the colours myself and they were just glorious (old post here). Now I had 150 zippers.

The recent wish to make zippered mouth pencil cases for the grandboys (YumYum Brothers post here), set of a totally unexpected zipper obsession. I have been stitching zippers morning, noon and midnight, transforming waxy cloth into pencil cases, pouches and toilet bags aplenty. Making pillows for daughter and for grandbaby with – wait for it – zippered closures. It has been so much fun, both the making stuff part and supplying our young ones with loads of gifts to give away for Christmas and birthdays.

This was the first lot of big pouches/toilet bags that I made.

My zipper technique has been improving a lot.

One of the reasons I am enjoying this material so much, is that it does not unravel, so all edges can be left unfinished and there’s no need for lining or fancy finishing techniques.

Around 40 zippers later and I’m still not bored. Wow.

So how about you; zippers, friends or foe?