Make-Up Brush Roll Tutorial

It has been a long while since I last posted a sewing tutorial here, so I think it's due!

I had some leftover Tulip Tangled by Sarah Jane from Michael Miller's Sommer Collection, and I happened to be in need of a new organizer for my make up stuff. 

For daily make up, I hardly use anything other than eyebrow pencil, a couple of brushes and small eye shadows/blush. It was getting annoying to have to rummage through a pile of stuff in my make up pouch. Thus, I decided to make myself a make up brush roll that would fit all of my tools for everyday use.

For the inner side, I used whatever I had left from Summer Night Light also by Sarah Jane from Michael Miller's Wee Wander Collection. 

First, lets list the things you will need.

1 piece of outer fabric

2 pieces of inner fabric

1 piece of fusible fleece

1 piece of ribbon

Sewing gears

Notice that I didn't specify the sizes? Well it's because your tools are different from mine.It is best to do your own measurements, but I will explain later on how to decide the size.  

I was having a hard time deciding  on the ribbon to use, but I thought the contrasting lime green with pink dots as a link to the pink tulips would work best.

Now lets talk about measurements. First, you need to gather all the stuff you want to keep in the roll, and arrange them on the fabric side by side. Be sure to leave some room in between so they will still fit after the fabrics are stitched. Add about 3" extra on the fabric length. For the height, you need to decide on whether you want the top part to fold down before rolling or not. I did, so I added about 2" on top and added 1cm seam allowances on each side. Please pardon my inconsistency in the use of unit of measurement.

After you have your measurements, you need to cut all of your fabric and interfacing that same size, and the ribbon twice the length of that size.

Now that we have all of the materials ready, lets get started! Here's the how to:

1.  Iron all the fabrics. 

2. Fuse the fleece to the outer fabric following the manufacturer's instruction. 

3. Fold one of the inner fabric in half along the length and press. 

4. Arrange the inner fabrics on top of each other, aligning the bottom sides. Make sure that the fold is on the centre (instead of at the bottom). Pin the outer part. 

5. Arrange the brushes etc. in the pocket. 

6. Pin in between the contents. You will use these as sewing markers. 

7. Try rolling it with all the contents inside to see how well they all fit together. Adjust as necessary. 

8. Unroll and pull out all the contents, leaving just the pins on.

9. At this point, you have two options. One is to mark the pins and draw temporary lines for your stitching guide, or if you are not too anal about straight lines and have confidence in your steady hands you can just do it by eye. Sew straight lines where your pins are, creating deep pockets. Though barely visible, this picture below shows the after-stitched inner fabric

10. So these are the pieces we have at this point. I am showing the back of the inner fabric to show the stitches better. Now arrange your pieces like pictured below, good sides facing each other, with the ribbon folded in half and pinned to where you want it to come out from later. Stack them all on top of each other in the same order, making sure that the ribbon is on the INSIDE.

11. Sew along the perimeter, leaving about 2" opening for turning later.

12. Cut all four corners, make sure not to cut the stitches.

13. Turn your piece good side out, push the corners with something small to get cleaner points. Press all sides.

14. Top stitch all the way around, as close to the edge as possible. I also added another topstitch along the length, about 2" from the top. This will make it easier to fold the flap. If you want to make ones without a flaps then you just need to top stitch the perimeter.

And we're done! Thanks for reading, and be sure to post your projects!