How to Sew a Pocket on a Zipper Backpack

Video Transcript

"Hi I'm Karen for Expert Village. We are just using a straight stitch of two and a half stitched length. Make sure you have taken your zigzag off, you want it to be straight and you, like I mention before you might want to use a jeans needle. Something a little bit heavier because we have now several thickness of fabric. We have two thickness here and two thickness on our pocket. Now it is a good idea to go back and forth two or three times to reinforce the top of the pocket that is where a pocket gets a lot of stress. So you just go back and forth over there and then continue down. I'm top stitching a quarter inch from the edge of the pocket. (sewing) When you come to the corner you can pivot the fabric and again reinforce that top edge because that is where the pocket would get it stretch. Now remove your threads and trim off any excess threads you have and remove the pins. Now we would place the pocket flap and you can just eye it at this point. Make sure that the Velcro matches and that the pocket flap look nicely placed and even. Now it may a great idea to measure from the top of the bag it should be two and a half inches also from the top to the pocket. Just to make sure that is that pocket flap is straight. Very good! I'm going to put a few pins in there also, it is a little bit to close to the top of this so I'm going to move it up a speck and just measure to see if it is even. Place some pins to hold it while I sew. It is a great idea to put two pins in cause with one pin you can still have a little pivoting. So if you put two pins in it, it will hold it securely. We are going to sew just along the top here. Now you may want to use a zipper foot if you want to get close I think this one would be okay with this foot. Again you want to do a little bit of a reinforcement at the beginning so you just go forward and back a few times it gives it a little extra threads sewing on there. So a quarter inch, making sure that you are not sewing on top of the pocket that will close the pocket. I'm coming off the flap and sewing back and forth to reinforce. Okay we would remove our pins and we would have a nice pocket and that is the front of the backpack. "