Sewing vinyl bags: Here is how it works!

Sewing vinyl bags: In this tutorial, I'll show you step-by-step how to sew practical bags made from clear vinyl. A great project for beginners, too!

Practical made easy: Sewing a bag from clear vinyl.

Bags made from vinyl and clear plastic are so practical! They are extremely easy to care for and universally useful. You can use them, for example, as a makeup bag or a handbag organizer.

But they are also versatile in the sewing room: for organizing small items, storing sewing tools, or carrying projects in your handbag.

Tips for sewing with vinyl and plastic

Vinyl and clear plastic are materials that have special properties. They tend to stick to the presser foot, and every brand can behave differently.

Before you get started, you should try a few stitches on a scrap piece of vinyl. If the material sticks a lot to the presser foot, you can stick strips of washi tape to the right and left of the feed dog; that makes it work better.

Sometimes I prefer to stick the tape onto the bottom of the presser foot and trim it accordingly.
You may also need to reduce the presser foot pressure a little. Feel free to try out what works for your machine.

My favorite method for sewing vinyl is using my walking foot. My Janome came with both a narrow and a wide walking foot as standard. For small bags, I really like using the narrow one because then I don't need an additional zipper foot.

My tip: If you don't have a walking foot, you can also use your sewing machine's Teflon or leather foot. You can recognize the leather foot by the small metal roller.

Which plastic is suitable for sewing?

That depends very much on the sewing machine. In general, sewing machines handle a plastic thickness of 0.2 - 0.4 mm well.

By the way, the sheets are available under various names. Clear plastic, PVC, transparent foil, holo foil, or vinyl: My tips and instructions in this post are applicable to all types of plastic sheets.

However, the materials can look very different.

Holo foil is beautiful for creating stylish bags. Backpacks and pencil cases also look really cool in holo! Holo foil reflects quite well, so the contents of the bag are only partially visible.

I sewed the flat zipper pouch from this material. The foil shimmers in different color nuances.

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Where can you order clear plastic?

I usually buy the vinyl^* for my bags online. It's called PVC sheeting and can be used for many other great things. In this post, I used vinyl with a thickness of 0.2 mm.

If you want your bag to have a bit more structure, you can also use PVC with a thickness of 0.4 mm^*. It has the advantage that it is not only sturdier but also creases less. It is still easy to sew and doesn't stick as much as the 0.2 mm thick foil.

How can I smooth out clear plastic?

Holo and thin clear plastic in particular tend to wrinkle and crease. There are various ways to reduce these creases.

1. Place a kitchen towel over the plastic and iron it with mild heat. Instead of a kitchen towel, you can also use parchment paper. I like to place the fabric pieces inside a sheet of parchment paper folded in half.
2. You can remove the creases with the heat of a hair dryer.
3. You can heat the ironing surface of your ironing board and then spread the plastic out on the warm board and smooth it out.

What else do I need to look out for?

Plastic doesn't like seam rippers! A hole made in the material won't close up again. That's why you should pin your pattern pieces well. For example, with extra-strong Magic Clips^*, which I like to use very much.

They hold really tight and are very reliable at preventing fabric and plastic from slipping.

You can also slightly increase the stitch length depending on the project: each stitch creates a perforation where the plastic could tear under heavy use.

A tip for turning: Some plastic can make turning the bag difficult. It is easier if you warm the corners with a hair dryer before turning.

I reveal even more tips for sewing with plastics and synthetic materials in a separate blog post.