Swimsuit Wet Bag

Hey everybody, I'm gonna show you today how to make an awesome and totally customizable swimsuit wet bag. It will solve all of your summertime problems with wet swimsuits from your kiddos in the car. We will use a heavy duty outdoor canvas material and a waterproof material on the inside to catch all of the moisture. The first thing you will do is choose the shape you want. I made sure it was big enough and deep enough to hold one, two, or three, swimsuits and the accessories.

You can make this any shape you want. The shape I chose was a half circle or a rainbow shape because my daughter wanted to have me paint rainbows on the outside. If you choose to paint it, you will use some acrylic paint. Now, if you want to, you can use some fabric media mixed with it. And all that will do is make this texture a little bit more forgiving and malleable or pliable.

But don't worry I've used acrylic my whole life and it's awesome. So from your canvas, you will cut two shapes from the outside, and then you will mirror those two shapes with the material that you're using from the inside. So the material I've chosen is cloth diaper material. It's the inside lining material. You can find this at your local craft store.

But a little hack is that you could use a tablecloth, an outdoor picnic tablecloth from your dollar store or local store, or you could cut up a reusable bag. The only thing you need to make sure is that it's a little bit waterproof, which all those materials are. So once you have your outside decorated and the way that you want it to be, let it dry of course. And then cut out two of your lining shapes from your lining material. So when you're making anything with a zipper, did you know that you could cut your zipper to any length?

The only thing that matters is that you add a stopper piece and you can do that right on your sewing machine. So for this particular project, I'm to measure the zipper length to the exact size that I want it to be, and simply give it a cut. The one thing to note is that you wanna make sure that you have plastic zipper teeth and not metal zipper teeth for this. And then all I will do is back stitch back and forth three, four, maybe five times, right along the edge there to add our own zipper stop. So come right over to your machine.

And voila I check this out, it ads the stop right there. So now we're ready to assemble our zipper pouch. So to assemble your zipper pouch, you will first do a zipper sandwich as I like to call it. So it'll be lining fabric facing up, make your zipper right at the top and make it flush with the edge and then add your outside face down. Make sure that your edge is flush over here.

And it's okay if a little bit falls off the edge on this side. I like to use these little clam clips to keep them in place. I'm gonna go over to my sewing machine and swap out the straight edge foot with the zipper foot. And the cool thing about a zipper foot is every sewing machine will have them and it will allow you for your needle to go really close to the edge of the zipper so that it's a nice flush edge. So when you're opening it, there's not a lot of extra fabric around the zipper edge.

There's two things I like to note when I'm sewing my zippers. The first is I like to backstitch at the very beginning and at the very end, just to make sure that it's on nice and tight. You could also anchor your stitch if you prefer that. And as you're going along the sewn edge here, you will make sure that to keep edge of your zipper foot nice and close to the edge of the zipper. And you can kind of feel it as you move.

Another thing I like to do when sewing zippers on my machine to make sure that the stitch is nice and straight is to move the zipper pull out of the way. So you'll stop your stitch at some point in the middle of the zipper, lift your foot, and then pull the pull out of the way. This will make sure that you keep a nice straight stitch and you won't have a bump as you're sewing past where the zipper pull is sitting on the zipper. And then backstitch at the end. So we have our first layer of the sandwich complete.

So now we will continue with the other side. So do the same as we did before. Lay lining layer up the second lining layer up, and now this piece is going to become your zipper because it's attached. So then you will make sure that this piece is flush to the top just like we did before and then add your outside face down. The one thing to note is to make sure that along this edge here, that your outside is lined up with your outside and your lining is lined up as flush as possible on the edge to the lining.

Because if we sew it in a complete circle or when we close it all up, you'll wanna make sure that it lays flat and lays straight. So I will do what I did before and clip them into lace. Head back over to your sewing machine and use your zipper foot again. Remember to move your pull out of the way. And stitch in place.

So normally if you're making a zipper pouch, your next step would be to iron this area flat right here, and then run a stitch along the edge. The one thing you have to remember is that you're using waterproof material, which will like bleed melt in iron. So I still like to run that stitch right here across the edge, but I won't iron it first. So it gets a little bit tricky. You just kind of have to pull, do your best to pull this away from the teeth as you're doing your top stitch.

This is important because then as you're opening your zipper bag, especially in the heat of taking off a swimsuit or something, you're not gonna get this fabric stuck into the zipper teeth. So just do your best to run the stitch along the top right here. So of course swap out your zipper foot back to your straight foot. So your finished edge will look something like this, where you're running this straight stitch to keep anything from going into the teeth. So this is the most important part, 'cause if you do not do this part, you will not finish your bag appropriately and it will be stuck, open your zipper.

You'll wanna make sure it's open so that when we put it all together, it's not stuck closed. I've done that before. So the next step is that you will open your bag so that we can stitch around the entire outside of the bag. You will line up your two outside pieces and your two inside pieces, right sides together, and pin them into place. You can use the clam or the pins either way to hold it into place.

Now when you're lining up your zipper, where it meets the fabric, I tend to want to make sure that the zipper is facing towards the lining so that when the bag has completely opened up, you want the whole outside to be as flush and flat as possible. So the zipper is obviously 3D here. So I pinch it together, line up your outsides so that the zipper is facing the lining. That will give you the flattest and nicest flat zipper as you can in the finished bag. The other thing to mention is that as you're sewing, you will stitch around the entire outside except for a chunk.

I don't know at least two, three, four inches, directly in the middle of the lining at the bottom of the bag. That's where you'll turn it right side out. So I will leave an opening two, three, four inches, however long that is to be able to turn the bag right side up when we're completed, I tend to like to sew the outside of my bags as this final step with a larger seam allowance than normal. So I like to sew it with a half inch seam allowance. When you look at the plate on your sewing machine, this plate underneath your foot, you'll see that there's little notches or marks and the notch that is just usually, usually that is just outside of your straight edge foot will be the half inch mark.

And the reason I like to do that is because it gives it a finished final edge on the edge, and you'll make sure to catch all of the pieces or all of the linings and all the fabrics in one straight seam all the way around the edge without missing it. So now we'll take the entire thing and move it over to our sewing machine for that half inch seam allowance. Be sure to backstitch as you're starting and backstitch as you're stopping at that opening at the bottom of the lining. So another reason to make that zipper flat like we did when we were pinning it all together is when you're coming over to the bump of the zipper, be sure to slow down and make sure that it stays flat as you're going over the top of it. And sometimes you can even tug very, very gently on the back of your fabric to make sure that it goes over it nice and tight.

So another reason why it's really important to have a larger seam allowance along the edge is that because I chose to do a curved line here as the shape, we are going to want to clip the edges all the way around any curved lines, by making a notch from the edge of the fabric into just before this stitch starts. And this is gonna loosen up any bulk so that when you turn it right sides out, your shape will be beautiful. Typically when I get up here to this portion right up by the zipper, I like to clip on either side of it with closer notches, because that's where the bulk is. And you wanna make sure that it kind of releases this edge of fabric so that when it's turned right side out again, it lays nice and flush. As you're clipping these if ever there is a clip that gets too close to the seam.

The reason we do this before we turn the bag is you easily can just run your stitch right over where you clipped it too close to reinforce the seam that you already had sewn. So no worries if you make a mistake or if you have your kiddos helping you out. So now you will turn your bag right side out through that bottom lining and you'll pull the bag completely through. This is thicker fabric. So you might have to fight with it just a little bit.

The reason why you needed your zipper open before is that now you're able to feed both the lining and the outside through that zipper opening, and then start to smooth out any corners or any edges with your hands. Now keep in mind if you did choose a different shape that maybe has a more square bottom, just make sure you clip your edges accordingly so that when you're doing this part and you're smoothing everything out that it lays completely flat. So the very very last step before you can bring this to the beach, this summer is to finish the opening in the lining. So pull your lining out at the bottom and you'll flatten it all. And kind of with your fingers you can choose to finger press this, or you can choose to pin it.

It's not a really important seam so I don't tend to pin it, but it is important that it gets closed. It isn't an important what it looks like in my opinion anyway. So you'll finger press this nice and flat or pin it like I said, and then just run a straight stitch right along the edge here to finish it so then you can put your lining back into the outside and you'll be ready to rock. Clip any threads you have, that have come out in the process. And you are ready to fill this with swimsuits, goggles, sand toys, and anything else that you'd like for the beach.