How to sew a tapered toiletry bag. Easy beginner sewing project

Hi, welcome back to Christine's Home Affairs. I've got a quick little project today and it has to be quick because mum's coming up to visit me for a couple of days and she'll be here in a couple of hours. So I need to get it finished before she gets here. This is a little probably a makeup pouch or a toiletry bag tapered on the sides and then also tapered on this side as well. We have a wider box at the bottom than we do at the top. You can make it a wristlet or not. And we've just got a regular dress zip in this today so we won't be using a continuous zip. We have a d-ring and a swivel clip. Again, you don't need to put that in if you don't want to either. So come along and we'll make this project up quickly and see if we can get it done before mum gets here. Okay, here's everything that we're going to be using today. I have a really pretty daisy print fabric for the outer fabric. I'm going to use this purple for the lining. I have a 30 centimetre or 12 inch zip and this is a regular dress zip. I have a small swivel clip and a d-ring. It doesn't matter what size of these you use and you can leave it out if you want to altogether. But whatever size you do use, adjust the size of your wristlet strap to suit the d-ring and clips that you've got. And lastly, we have a piece of parlan. The product that I use is called parlan but you can use any type of lightweight fusible fleecy stabilizer. This is just a remnant that I've got so I figured my bag can be this size. Now I don't have measurements just yet but you will see them up on the screen in a few seconds. So the fusible piece that I have here is 11 and a half inches wide by 15 inches long which is 29 by 35 centimetres. Let's fold this in half so we've got our 11 inches across here. I'm going to box the corners at the base of my bag first. From the outside edge I'm measuring four centimetres or one and a half inches and we'll do that on both outside edges. You'll notice that I haven't drawn in my seam allowance here so this is actually going to include my seam allowance. On the bottom section I'm going to take off one centimetre or three-eighths of an inch and I mark the bottom at three centimetres or one and a quarter inches and you need to have a different size because we don't have our seam allowance. So if I just show you what the allowance is here, that's our stitching line, you can see that that then becomes a square so you're going to have nice square boxed corners. We can cut that out at the top. We're going to measure two centimetres or three quarters of an inch and you can mark a line from the bottom corner of your box or you can just go and cut it straight out. For myself I'm still working this out without any measurements at all so this will give you an idea that you can make these kinds of bags or any project for that matter with any size fabric. It's just knowing how to put the box corners and zips in that you might need help with. So this is now the template for the bag. This is our stabiliser and our fabric is going to be cut a little bit bigger than that. What I need now is to place my fabric behind this stabiliser and cut it out at least one centimetre bigger all the way around and that will allow for my seam allowance. I'll fuse my parlan to the wrong side of my fabric. In my case I have a half inch d-ring so I've got a piece of fabric that is four times the width of that so that's half by four is two inches and I've cut it just slightly narrower than the two inches. I folded it in half with the raw edges together, folded that in half again and pressed it. Then I've grabbed a little bit of fusible fleece that is the width of this once it's been folded in four and again I've cut it slightly narrower than that half inch width. I'll place that inside the fabric here and I want it one centimetre on either side shorter than the length of the handle and then I'll fold that back over, fold all those edges back together again, I'll take it back to the heat press and iron all of that in place. This is 12.5 by 2 inches and the fusible on the inside is 11.5 by half an inch. All your measurements will be up on the screen for the sizes that I'm doing here today. I'm going to make a little tab for the wristlet as well and that's just been cut out at 2 by 2.5 inches. I folded that in half again lengthwise but I've not put any fusible inside here because I've already turned off the iron and I can't be bothered walking back across the room. I fused the fleece to the outer fabric and I'll also cut up a piece of this purple for the lining to the same size as the outer fabric here. Okay I've got my fabric ready for the short pieces. We're just sewing down the long edges. For this one here that's the wristlet strap we want to hide our end seams so before we sew this together we'll open the fabric out and just bring the right sides together and we'll sew the short end closed just at this end here. Once that's been done you can open the fabric out again, fold all the edges over until you've got your strip, then sew down both long edges. So we'll do that, the short end here, then we'll fold these edges and sew the long strap. Before we do that we need to put our clip onto our fabric. There's no point closing it up if we've got nothing to attach it to. So just bring the edges together, feed it through your swivel clip or your d-ring, it depends on which product you want to put your wristlet onto. So we've got our swivel there, bring those edges together and then we can sew it. Then we can fold it and then sew all those long edges. You don't need to sew the short end, I've just done that because I was too lazy to start and stop. Starting from the center here I'm going to bring those edges together and I'm doing that so that I don't twist my fabric. Bring it up until the ends meet and then sew that closed. Then we just need to finger press that seam open. By pressing the seam open you're distributing a little bit of that bulk on the seam and then we can bring those edges together again and then fold that together again. Then we just need to sew in the round until the entire piece has been stitched on both long edges. I'll do the side that's got the opening first and you'll just slide your clip out of the way as you go. This is where the seam is. Rather than ending here and cutting my thread I'm just going to sew right in the ditch of the seam. It just saves time and continue on. The wristlet strap has been enclosed. We've got a little tab and the last thing we need to do for our strap, this is where our join is here, I'm just going to slide that along so that it sits just inside the loop there and then I'll sew across there. I'll go and do that later and with this little piece I'll take the d-ring and just feed that on there and I'll set that one aside for later as well. Let's grab our lining and outer fabric. This must have been the end of a roll so it's got a bit of gold lettering on here. I'm actually going to use the wrong side of my lining as the inside of my bag. Nobody will ever know that it's the wrong side because they won't get to see the right side. I'm going to treat this as my wrong side. I'm going to have the right side and the right side facing and line up all of those layers and we need to trim our fabric back to be one centimetre or three-eighths of an inch bigger than our fusible fleece all the way around. So what you can do is just mark a line all the way around that is one centimetre. If you don't have a rotary cutter and ruler with a mat then you can scissor cut this. If you do have all of those tools then you can just line up your ruler to the amount of your seam allowance and as I said in my case it's three-eighths of an inch or one centimetre. I'll cut this fabric out making sure that I've got that seam allowance all the way around. Okay we're now ready to put our zip in. So let's separate these pieces. So you can't even tell that's the wrong side can you? It'll be our secret. All right I've put a label on the front of my bag. I've run a strip of double sided tape and I have my zip here and you can use a regular zip or your continuous zips. If you're using a continuous zip you can cut it to size and put your slider on now or later. Remove that tape and if you don't have tape just use pins or clips to put your layers together. I've got metal teeth on this side here. I don't want to sew over those and I don't want them in my bag either. So let's open this out. We want the longest opening here to be to the right. We're going to cut all this back later. I am going to leave this little bit of metal on for now but I'm going to overhang the end of the zip just by about half an inch or one and a half centimeters and you want to flip it upside down. So the coil needs to be faced down toward me and the clean edge of the tape goes to the top edge and line that up. So that little metal tab is about half an inch or one and a half centimeters from the outside edge. I'll run some more tape over the top of the zip here and then I'll grab my lining piece and remember this is going to be the right side so I'm going to have the two right sides facing and line that up as well. This is now ready to go to the machine and be stitched in place and you'll use your zipper foot to sew those pieces together. If you're using a continuous zip and you have them separated you can go and attach the other side at this point as well. We'll sew as close as we can to that bump that we can feel with our zipper. Now that that's done we can open the fabric out and press the lining side and the outer side and then bring the lining to the back and we're going to top stitch from one end to the other. So that's now in place and top stitched. We need to do the other side. It's probably easier to work with your zip closed now so that you can line everything up. Take your fabric, fold it in half and I should have done this to begin with. Just make a little notch and we'll do the same in the outer fabric as well and we'll also do the same in the zips. Bring the fabric edges together, find the center and mark a little notch. I've run some double-sided tape along here and you can see my little notch in there. Line up the center of the zip and once you've done that you can line up the lining with the center of your zip as well and we'll go back to the machine and sew that and then we'll open it out. Open the zip out all the way and then we can fan it out and top stitch and remember to move your zipper head out of the way when you get to it. Now you can reach in and open the zip all the way out to the end and then just press the fabric away from the teeth of the zip. Bring the lining behind the outer. I'm starting at the closed end. It really doesn't matter which end you start with and then we can top stitch all those layers. I've lined up the edge of my zip and the bottom edge of my bag and I want a smaller boxed corner at the top than I do at the bottom. Now I forgot to hit record before so I've skipped this step and I'm just going to show you what I've done. Following the angle of the taper here from the outside edge I've measured three centimeters or one and a quarter inches and I've marked the line on the side there and I've done the same on this side here. So that's three centimeters or one and a quarter inches and I've followed the angle of the taper from the top. It's two centimeters or three quarters of an inch and then I've cut this section out on both sides. Carefully bring the zip around to the front or to the top. I'm now going to sew the zip end closed here and along this edge here. I'll tape that together. I've just put a couple of pieces of adhesive tape on the end there to hold this zip in place. This end I'll stitch and now I'll go and sew that. Once you've done that you can remove this tape. Open your zip at least halfway. We don't want it too close to the edge here though and then get in and separate your lining and your outer fabric. Bring your tab to the inside. Just make sure it's out of the way this area where you stitch shortly. Line up the bottom edge of your lining and also the bottom edge of your outer fabric. Okay all of the edges have been clipped together. For the outer fabric we're going to sew all the way down both side edges. For the lining fabric we're going to sew all the way down one side edge here. Sew this section closed with a back stitch at the beginning and the end and this section here and we're going to leave this side section open. Let's go do that now. I have a one centimeter or three eighths inch seam allowance. This is the other side of the lining. I'll sew down about an inch and a half or so backstitch and then I'll move forward and allow myself as much of an opening as I can. This side's easy because I can just follow the edge of the fusible. I've got a little tab underneath here. I will triple stitch in that section. Okay our side seams are done. I've left that little opening on the side here for turning through. Let's take our boxed corners and you can just mark a nick in the corner here so that you can line up the fold with the seam on the other side. Line up that notch with your side seam and we'll do the same for all four corners at the bottom of our bag and then the section where our zip is we're going to line up that side seam with the so that was a lining side and the outer side we'll do exactly the same. I'm lining up that side seam with the middle section of the zip and then I'll clip all of those layers together and I haven't quite measured my boxing properly so it's a little bit off but if I sew across there I'll be able to fudge that and nobody will notice that it's not perfect. And we'll do the same for the other end of the zip. The reason why my fabric is off here at the top is because I didn't make a proper allowance for my seam allowance when I cut out the box corners. So it's a good idea to mark your seam allowance first and then take your measurements and then you can have the same measurements on top and side. Let's sew all of these together and then we'll turn it the right way around. So these are the bottom edges of the outer fabric that I'm doing first. It doesn't matter which order you do them in. I've got the center section where the zip is. I'll triple stitch over the entire section and just make sure I've caught both sides because of that incorrect cutting. All right we're nearly done. Let's find the opening here and we'll bring everything the right way around. Poke out all your corners. You might need to open your zip further as well and once you're happy with all of that close up that side seam and I will quickly go and do that now. All right the side seam's done. Let's have a look and see how this has turned out and there we have our finished toiletry bag. So the size is quite good. I'm really happy with the size of it. It's amazing how much you'll fit in there as well. With the d-ring on the side here I have gone and sewn really close to the edge of the bar there just so that it doesn't slide through and with the swivel clip I've closed up this section as well so that the wristlet strap doesn't move. There's tons of room in here. The only thing I wish I had done differently with this bag is use Paltex or even Decovil instead of the lightweight stabilizer. If you have something thicker like foam or your heavier palan that would be good too because I do think that this bag is a little bit floppy just using the lightweight palan. Let's have a look. So there's plenty of room inside. Nobody will ever know that I've used the wrong side of the fabric for the lining. I think it looks good and it was a great way to use up a fabric that I obviously couldn't use because of that gold print. So this is what I mean by it being a little bit too floppy. It doesn't hold its shape as well as I'd like to but it's certainly going to be easy enough to throw in the wash and dry very quickly as well. Look who's turned up. Hello everybody. You remember my mum Hannah? She came and met you all a few months ago now isn't it? It was quite a while ago. Yeah so remember that video I did the other day where I showed you all that fabric? Well mum's come up to claim her lot. Yes I do. So we're going to go to the shop and check that out shortly. Have to get some fabric. Yes. So here's today's project. It's a little tapered bag. We've got the taper on the sides here and then the boxing is wider at the bottom than it is at the top. Again I should have used a sturdier stabilizer for this. Even the Peltex that would have been really nice with this as well. And the little wristlet strap I have gone and closed that up at the top. So it's cute. Are you going to make this? Yeah I probably will. And I will make that one too. That was last night. That was a video I finished a couple of days ago. I'll pop a link down below. Good on you. I've only made one so far. This is actually a really quick project to do so I may actually do some for the shop. I will put a price tag of about $30 to $35 for this one in the shop as well. So I'll see how that one goes. It's very pretty. Thank you. Nice fabric. Yeah. I hope you've enjoyed this video and I shall catch you next time. And if we're lucky mum and I might do a video together tomorrow. If you're lucky. If I behave myself. See ya. Okay bye.