Free Pattern and Tutorial: The Pochi Dumpling Zipper Pouch – part 1

This Japanese style zipper pouch is the perfect size for sewing supplies, cosmetics, or pens and pencils. It has a flat bottom to help it stand up. The zipper ensures that your things are kept securely.

This project requires intermediate sewing skills, including cutting and sewing bias binding, sewing a zipper, and a small amount of hand sewing.

Part 1 of this free sewing tutorial (this blog post) contains instructions for drafting the pattern piece that I used for my pouches. This technique let’s you make the pouch bigger or smaller to suit your needs.

If you would rather download and print a pattern piece, you can use the main pattern piece for my Patchwork Potholder pattern. It will make a slightly smaller pouch with the same cute shape. In that case, you can skip to {Step 2} for the rest of the tutorial.

The blog post below is totally free to read, print, and sew! Just hit CTRL +P on your computer to print. There is an optional PDF download offered at the end of the post. Or join our Sewing Bee Community for access to over 300 PDF patterns (including this one), live workshops, premium video courses, and more.

How to make your own Pochi Pouch pattern piece:

You’ll need a bowl that is about 7 1/2” in diameter (regular paper bowl size), some paper, a ruler, and a pen or pencil.

Trace the bowl on one side of the paper.

Use your ruler to measure and draw a line through the center of the circle. Then measure your 1/2 circle and draw another line to divide it in half. This second line is the ‘quarter line.’

Place the edge of the bowl against the quarter line and trace around the bowl again so the bowls intersect. Finally, use your ruler to connect the outer edges of the two circles.

Cut around the outer edges of this shape to make your pattern piece. If you use a 7 1/2” bowl, this pattern piece will be the same size as mine. Feel free to make yours larger or smaller if you wish.

As you can see, I drafted my pattern piece so that I could use it with a leftover quilt block. It’ makes my pouch look like I spent so much time on it! 🙂

Use this pattern piece to cut out 1 pouch exterior, 1 pouch lining, and 1 piece of stabilizer, such as fusible fleece, cotton batting, or ByAnnies soft and stable (my favorite for this project).

Optional: See how to use fat quarters with this pattern (layout diagram too).

You’ll also need a 40” length of 1 1/2” bias binding and a 12” or longer zipper. Here’s a video showing how to make continuous bias binding.

Now go to Step 2 for the rest of this cute dumpling pouch tutorial!

Happy Sewing!