SAILRITE!

I saved all my pennies and finally bought that 2nd sewing machine this family needed! (between myself, my 2 sons, their friends they were teaching to sew, and my friends I am teaching to sew- the one sewing machine we own was costing more to maintain that it cost to buy new!) SAILRITE was recommended to me by a friend (who has a friend who has an industrial machine) I decided on the Sailrite LSZ-1. It has a walking foot.

It came with a spool of heavy nylon thread. I make quick work of setting it up and getting it threaded. Or at least that was the plan. I bumped the bobbin casing out of place and had to wait for Connor to get home and be my third hand. Then I decided to make a satchel to carry the power pedal/cord. So I found canvas & denim and cut out pieces that night,

 
 The zipper, D-rings and strap were purchased the next morning.

I sewed the zipper using what I learned making my 3 Zipper pouch from THIS tutorial.
I sewed the side strips to the zipper, ironed them open, and top stitched. When I sew zippers. I put the pull tab about 1/2 open, sew starting at the closed zipper end of the zipper, then when I get to the pull tab (Picture Left), I stop the machine, lift the presser foot, pull the tab behind the presser foot. (picture right)

HERE IS THE TOP STITCHING:

**SO FAR- This machine sews like a dream through thickness! (But the added fabric pull of the walking foot will take some getting used to)

Then I made end tabs for the zipper. Using the blue denim, I cut the tabs  twice as long as the finished width of the zipper with side fabric and made it about 3 inches wide. (for this one, the two fabric strips were 3" by 6")
I folded and ironed one long end of each tab and stitched the fold in place. The picture was from the first piece I cut out, TOO SMALL. iron over, the stitch along the folded fabric.

Then fold it in half, lengthwise, and pit these to either end of the zipper. (explained better at that zipper pouch tutorial LINKED HERE, too)
Here is what it looked like with end tabs sewn:

 

Then I made fabric loops to attach the D-Ring to the ends. Using smaller strips of fabric (3" x 4"_ I iornoned the long end over twice so the folded edged met in the middle.

Top stitched both sides. Then put through the D rings and attached to the zipper section ends:

**It should be noted here, that my zipper section was too long. I had to remove the Ring Tabs, cut an inch off each end, then re tack down the ring tabs)

I then made inner and outer pockets & attached to the front and back panels:

 
HERE IS A LINK for how to sew patch pockets. it is similar to how i did mine.

Them I placed front and back pieced right sides together (make sure both pockets are top edge the same direction). I sewed along the side, the bottom, and up the other side. Then I mitered my bottom corners to make more of a box shape and give my satchel depth.

See how it makes such a nice square!

it is pretty simple:

1: with the pouch turned inside out, pinch the corner together so it makes a triangle. Make sure the seams math up and the sides are even.

2: sew a straight line across "the bottom edge of the triangle" so it looks like:

THAT'S IT! when you turn it right side out it will be that nice boxed square.

NOW came the more difficult part. This satchel was a concept. I have never done D-rings and I knew the pieces wouldn't really match up. Mu zipper section was a very squared corner rectangle and my pouch was an oval. BUT is had SQUARED bottom edges, I wanted to make it work.

I got too wrapped up in making it work that I forgot to get good pictures. So I will try to explain.

After fitting the 2 sections (zipper section and pouch ) and trimming the zipper section to fit, I sewed both short ends of the zipper section to the side seam edges of the pouch, lining up the middle of the loop for the ring with the seam on the side. (The pouch was turned inside out)*KEEP RIGHT SIDES TOGETHER!

THEN I unzipped the zuipper section and sewed the long edges of the sipper to the pouch, folding the ends(blue denim tabs) to make them fit.

Here is the result: