Making the easiest DIY zipper pulls ever

I hope you liked the Pretty Zippered Pencil Case I showed you how to make yesterday. Having a little something special ready and waiting for young students could motivate them to feel excited for the first day of school and may just make them feel a little more at ease and excited about beginning school. Today I’m showing you how to make the easiest zipper pull attachment with no machine sewing required that can go with the 3 cute back-to-school pencil cases I featured this week. These zipper pulls require very few supplies and include DMC Matte Cotton Yarn (or embroidery floss) and an Elan Snap-Clip. These zipper pulls add functionality and bright, cheerful color to pencil cases, bags, backpacks and more.

4 bright and easy zipper pulls

materials

• 5 to 6 skeins of DMC Matte Cotton Yarn or embroidery floss
• Elan Snap-Clip ½” (the D-ring that comes with it is not required)
• crewel embroidery needle or yarn needle
• small scissors

Check out my Easy Zipper Pulls YouTube video tutorial.

Supplies needed to make the easiest zipper pull ever

Step 1

Choose a cotton yarn or embroidery floss as the main color for the tassel mop and remove the paper sleeve.

Note: You can use the whole skein or unravel ½ of the skein to use. If you don’t want to use up all of your gorgeous DMC Matte Cotton Yarn, using ½ the skein will work as well.

Paper sleeves pulled off of a skein of floss for the main color in the tassel mop

Step 2

Cut a 36” length from the remaining 6 colors of embroidery floss, as shown. I’m repeating my colors for a total of 6 rounds of color.

6 lengths of 6 colors of DMC Matte Cotton Yarn

Step 3

Using the tassel mop color, tie one of the 6 colors around the center of the skein and wrap it around the skein tightly leaving a length of floss. Attach the snap clip and use the extra length of floss to wrap around the base of the snap clip several times to secure it. Leave extra floss to tie to the next color.

First piece of DMC Matte Cotton Yarn wrapped around the center of the mop skein and securing the Elan Snap-Clip

Building on the yarn wrap

Step 4

Continue to tie and wrap other colors evenly on each side of the center wrap incorporating your tied ends into the wrapping until it looks like the picture below. Use your yarn needle to burry loose ends and tie off thread.

Building on the yarn wrap with other colors

Step 5

Bend your skein in half and using about 10” of the last color of floss, tie your wrapped loop, split the floss in half and use these split ends to tie it tight.

Zipper pull bent and last color wraps the tassel mop together with the arms of the zipper pull

Step 6

Cut the looped ends of your tassel so that they’re even.

Cutting the loop ends so that the tassel mop is even

Step 7

Attach the tassel to your zipper and admire.

The final result with Elan Snap-Clip and DMC Matte Cotton Yarn

Bright, pretty, practical zipper pulls add a fun accessory to the back-to-school pencil cases.

If you are more of an auditory learner, you may wish to watch my YouTube Tutorial to make these zippers pulls.

I hope you enjoyed this week’s pencil case tutorials and that you have built more zipper insertion, applique and quilting confidence. Be sure to try these zipper pulls from today’s tutorial for the young ones in your life to help brighten up their school year with just 2 specific sewing notions DMC Matte Cotton Yarn  and Elan Snap-Clip. Have a great weekend and Happy Sewing.

This is part 5 of 5 in this series

Go back to part 4: Stay organized and sew up a Pretty Zippered Pencil Case

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