So you want to make yourself (or someone you care about) a Sunny Glasses Pouch - love that!
I’ve got some good tips and advice, as well as a link to a full-length YouTube tutorial below. My hope is that these tricks will help you sew this fun and practical project together in a flash.
You can pick up your copy of the pattern here.
Choosing Material
The great thing about this pattern is that it uses very little fabric. You can stash dive and hopefully come up with the three pieces of fabric you need pretty easily. I tend to stick with a tried and true recipe for picking my prints, and it’s worked well for me every time.
For the exterior fabric, I like to choose a fun, medium-scale print. Since the glasses pouch is so small, you only get to see a small amount of the fabric at a time. If you picked a large-scale print, you wouldn’t see very much, and it would be a bit of a waste.
When it comes to the lining fabric, I almost always choose a light-coloured print. This is just a personal preference, because I enjoy the contrast of the bright exterior fabric against the more subdued lining fabric. Whether you choose to go with a light fabric or not, I’d suggest picking something that complements / contrasts with the exterior fabric.
The binding fabric is only seen in very small amounts, so I like to choose fabric that has a small-scale print. The added bonus is that a busy print will hide any imperfections in your binding stitches. This might be especially useful if this is your first time sewing with bias binding.
Choosing Stabilizer
When making your quilt sandwich, you can either choose to use batting or a foam product for your stabilizer.
I’ve made lots of glasses pouches with both materials, and I think they both do the job.
However, given the choice, I’d pick a foam product over the batting. I personally enjoy the squishiness (and the perceived added protection) that the foam offers.
My preference for a foam product is ByAnnie’s Soft and Stable. I like that it has a fuzzy layer that makes the fabric stick to it.
Quilting the Sandwich
Before I make my quilt sandwich, I like to mark my lines on my exterior fabric using either a pen or a Hera marker. Lately I’ve been leaning towards the Hera marker, and while the lines are sometimes hard to see when I’m sewing, I like that I don’t have to worry about pen lines disappearing / reappearing over time.
I often choose a cross-hatch pattern, spacing my lines ½” apart. I think the scale looks nice on the size of the Sunny Glasses Pouch.
If you want the best results, you’ll either spray or pin your layers together before you start quilting. If I’m being honest, I often skip this step (sometimes to my detriment). Don’t be like me!
When quilting, I like to choose a longer stitch length (I set mine to 3.0) which not only quilts faster, but produces a nice clean look.
Cutting the Sunny Glasses Pouch Pieces
The project is only made up of two pieces, and the instructions are pretty straightforward. I like to use my Creative Grids 12 ½” x 8 ½” ruler to cut out the front and back, and then my Creative Grids circle templates to round the corners.
I’m not a fan of using a rotary cutter to cut around the templates - I prefer to mark the lines with my Sewline Air Erasing pen (such a nice dark mark, and the tip glides so easily on fabric!), and then cut the corners using a pair of scissors. My LDH 8.5” craft scissors are no longer sold, but these ones look similar.
Once the pieces are cut out, it’s a great idea to stay stitch around the perimeter to secure the quilting stitches. Again, this is a step that I skip when I’m in a hurry.
Preparing the Bias Binding
If you’ve never made bias binding before, it’s a snap, and you’ll feel like a champion for learning a new skill.
The whole point of using bias binding is that it has a lot more stretch than typical binding (because it’s cut on the diagonal, instead of on the straight of grain). This stretchiness is what makes it swoop around curves cleanly, and (most importantly) without puckers.
Once cut and sewn together, I like to place a pin in my binding every 3 - 4 inches. It holds it together nicely without creating a harsh crease down the center. This is a huge help in getting a clean look to your binding.
Binding
I like that the Sunny Glasses Pouch pattern eases you into sewing binding onto curves by starting with the gentle slope on the pouch front. It’s as simple as sewing the binding to the lining side, then flipping it over and top stitching it down.
The same steps apply when attaching the binding to the entire glasses pouch - you start by sewing it to the exterior side of the pouch back, then flip it around to the front of the project and top stitch it down.
My favourite tool for this step is a stiletto (my preference is the one from ByAnnie’s). It’s lightweight, has a super sharp tip, and doesn’t roll off my table.
I’ve heard from a few people that even though this was their first time using bias binding, they were very happy with the overall results of their pouches. Of course as with most new skills, practice makes progress.
The one spot where I’ve heard people struggling is getting a clean finish on the join of the start and end of the binding.
I’ve got a little trick that works really well - check out the 21:54 mark of my YouTube video (it’s saved as a time stamp in the description), where I share my tip for a nice tight join.
Have you made a Sunny Glasses Pouch (or seven)? Let me know in the comments!
