boxy toiletry bag

i spied a few of these making the rounds of the craft blogs and thought i'd have a go at making one of my own. but rather than making it too small to fit anything i made it big enough to fit all the essentials. the finished bag measures 6" long by 3" tall by 3.5" wide. and looks something like this:

it's super simple and took less than an hour to make whilst watching tv. you'll need: 2 pieces of 10" by 15" fabric (one for the outer and one for the lining, you could just have one piece and not line it though), a zip, i used a 12 inch zip as i like having the excess, a 10" or 11" would also do, 2 buttons, a needle and thread/sewing machine and scissors.

fist off, cut out your fabric, press the 10" edges by about half an inch and top stitch these to the zip, backs facing. i hand stitched this bit as my sewing machine isn't liking zips right now, i did a long back-stitch in the same colour as the zip:

once you've sew both the outer and the lining on either side of the zip you then go on to sew your two remaining open sides; make sure your zip is in the middle when you do this bit and again, leave about half and inch for the seam, it should end up looking something like this:

to finish up you take the two corners from one end, make them meet in the middle at the zip and sew a button on top to hide the edges (check out the first photo to get an idea of what i mean here). do this on the other side two and that's it! you now should have a bag like mine : )

  enjoy!