Wet Bag Success!

I've been wanting to try making wet bags for six months, at least. Our older son swims as part of his preschool class, and our younger son is (should be) in cloth diapers.

My poor medium boy went through a whole semester of toting his undies/wet suit in a plastic bag. How uncool. How wasteful.

We already had the fabric, but getting invited to a fellow preschooler's birthday party was just the kick in the pants I needed to get the bags done. My kiddo helped me pick out zipper colors and straps for the handles, and I started the bags by doing some research during naptime.

A few tutorials that use PUL warned about it being very slippery to work with. A Lemon Squeezy Home recommends using baby powder to reduce the slippage, and I'm sure that would work great. However, I can't come near that stuff without getting it EVERYWHERE, so I opted to try my new glue stick. And it worked so well!

I ran a line of glue down the top of the PUL, then put the zipper on top. I could adjust the zipper, but the glue added just enough friction to keep things together.

One problem I have with installing zippers is the fabric seems to start "scootching" down as I sew, and by the end of the bag it's below where I started, and looks like an uneven mess. (Does this happen to anyone else? Is it because the zipper foot doesn't provide as much stability as a presser foot?)

To combat this, I usually pin the crap out of everything. But I didn't think pinning PUL would be a good idea, so I did this instead:

Oh yeah. I was so excited when I thought of it! And it worked pretty well.

I made my son's first, to work out any kinks. On his, I sewed all sides of the PUL, pulled the bag through, and sewed the outside bottom of his bag shut. On his friend's, I sewed the outer bag completely, pulled it through, and sewed the PUL together.

I liked the way the PUL lining finished better (and I usually pull through my linings), but I'm interested to see if either bag has wicking or leaking issues.

I'm really happy with how well these turned out, and I'm looking forward to making more in the future.

Of course when you give a little bag, you have to put something in it. DS1's friend had admired his Green Bay Packer zipper pulls, so when we were at the Christmas Day game, we picked up another set. A wet bag may not be super exciting to a four year old, but I know he will like the zipper pulls. GO PACK!