Fold over mobile phone pouch

I decided to make myself a mobile phone pouch as pictured above.  I had certain ideas of how I wanted it to be. I wanted it so you slipped the phone into the pouch and then have a flap that came over to close it.  I looked up lots of different tutorials and none were quite how I wanted it so I attempted my own design.  It took me a while to actually get this done, not only because of my newbie sewing skills but also because of how I wanted it to look and I wasn't quite sure how to achieve this.

A lot of the pouches I have seen have visible stitching around the pouch and I ideally didn't want this. I also didn't want to sew the flap on separately as I have also seen in some tutorials.  This may of been ok but I need it to be padded to protect my phone.  You can see the finished design above, which basically turned out how I wanted well except for the minor flaws *ahem, cough, looks sheepish*

So here's how I did it.  I hope it all makes sense you, by the end of this project I felt pretty confused myself so...

Materials used

1. Outer fabric.
2. Decorative trim.
3. Lining fabric.
4. Felt padding.

Obviously the size you cut your fabric depends upon how big you want your pouch to be.  I measured my phone and cut my fabric accordingly.  I could of probably done with making it a little bit bigger as by the time  I had sewn it all together I'd lost some of the size but thankfully my phone did actually just about fitted in my pouch.  I started with fabric cut approx 10 x 7 inches.

What to do

With any sewing project always think/read through things completely before you start and get everything prepared.  Once you've done that you can get stuck in.  One of these days I will actually do this myself!

First things, if you are using any decorative trims you need to sew these on to the outer fabric first.

Pin the trim where you want it and you can then sew it into place.  I left the trim slightly longer then it needs to be as later on I will be stitching it into the rest of the fabric.  Each time I did some stitching I did a few back stitches to secure each seam. Click on link for if you are unsure what I mean.

http://www.thesewingdictionary.com/#b

The next thing was to pin and stitch all the layers together.

Lay the layers on top of each other, outer layer on top, then the lining and then the felt. Place the outer fabric and the lining right sides together, for me it made no difference for me which way round the lining was facing as it was just plain cream.

I stitched all the way around the material but left a section open which would allow me to turn the fabric the right way out.  Remember your seam allowance, I left about 1/4 inch for mine.  If you don't leave a section open you won't be able to turn it the right way round.  When I did the final stitching for my pouch this hole was stitched close.  In a lot of sewing projects such as other types of pouches you would close the hole using a top stitch once you had turned it the right way round.

http://youtu.be/e4nrDMgOSq8?t=6m33s This link will start at the place in the tutorial where she does what I explained above.

When doing this part you would start sewing then stop, pull material out and reposition leaving a gap and then continue to sew where you need too.  When you have sewn all the way round, you can cut the excess threads.  You end up with a gap as shown below.

In the above image you can see I have already turned the material the right way round.  What I did next was fold and pin the pouch into the correct position.

Here is a link to a video tutorial so you can see exactly what I mean.  http://youtu.be/e4nrDMgOSq8?t=6m33s This link will start at the place in the tutorial where she does what I explained above.

So now all the fiddly bits our done all that's left to do is stitch the pouch together.  It wasn't that easy to stitch this part as it ended up being quite a thick amount of material to stitch through but me and my little sewing machine managed it!

Now stitch down each edge, remember your seam allowance. I left about 1/4 inch for for seam. At the beginning and end of stitching do a few reverse stitches so

You then have your finished pouch!

Here's a couple of pictures with the phone

There you have it, my mobile phone pouch.  If you look closely the flap sticks out at the sides as it's wider then the pouch and if you look at the picture of the open pouch you can see where I've folded the flap a bit when I stitched it together.  A few flaws, certainly some lessons learned and far too many hours but I got there in the end!  I should remember that experienced sewers who post projects on their blogs kind of know what they are talking about and that's why they have done things in a certain way!