First time making a wet bag

Today I made a wet bag.

I have been talking (and thinking) about doing a sewing project for a long time.  Collecting backpacks, raincoats and the like, in order to create new things from them.  Well, tonight/this morning, I decided I was done watching DIY and how-to videos on Youtube.  I was going to make a wet bag.  (I haven't used my sewing machine in 12 years.)

I cleared a space on my table for my sewing machine and got started.  First, I grabbed my iron that looks like it is straight out of the 70's (I found it at a dump) and plugged it in to make sure it still worked.  The cord on the iron is so old it is only covered with cloth, no rubber or plastic.  Having confirmed that the retro-iron worked, I began sifting through some of the discounted fabric I bought around Christmas time at JoAnn Fabrics.  I located two different kinds of fabric: one to be turned into PUL fabric with my iron on PUL, and another to be the outside of my bag.  I used some of my fabric measuring tape to figure out how big I wanted everything and then I got to cutting and ironing.  Now that my fabric was cut to size and my inside fabric was waterproofed (with the PUL), I needed a zipper.  I grabbed a red zipper from a Transformers backpack by using a seam ripper and a lot of pulling.  Whoever said seam rippers weren't dangerous has never stabbed themselves in the thumb, multiple times. Bandaged, supplies gathered and laptop ready with my Youtube how-to video I set to work.  The results aren't terrible, obviously could be better, but overall I am really happy with how things turned out.

Problems I ran into:

Some of the problems I ran into were minor and probably had I made this bag before easily avoidable.

1. The fabric with and without the PUL wouldn't really stay in place, even with pins, so the ends didn't match up anywhere inside the seams.
2. I only had pins to hold things in place where apparently it is better to use bobby pins or fabric clips to ensure PUL doesn't loose its waterproofing abilities.
3. My zipper head fell off of my zipper and the ends of the zipper were coming apart, so it took me about 15 minutes and some finagling to get that back on and working.
4. I didn't sew close enough to the zipper so it's a little shifty on one end.
5. My outer fabric is a very light cotton material where as the inside fabric is bold colors and stripes that show through the outer layer.
6. I forgot to iron my zipper first.
7. I didn't wipe off my table or make sure my fabric was free of debris before I ironed on the PUL. As a result of this, my inside PUL has some extra "personality".

 I don't necessarily think that the above mentioned things are that big of a deal, obviously my wet bag is not very professionally made, but I do believe that it will do the job and do it well-enough.  If nothing else, I can use it as a make-up bag!

If you want to watch the how-to video that I watched you can follow the link below. 

How to make the wet bag I made.

Otherwise, if you have any tips or tricks that you like to use for making your own wet bags, make-up bags, pencil bags or whatever you call them, please feel free to leave them in the comments!  Thanks for reading.