Sew a mini tissue pack

Head Cold season has hit here. People all around me are full of sniffles, sneezes and coughing. It's gross, but inevitable. I'm still OK, a touch of a sore throat, but fine otherwise. The boys have full on colds though and so the stack of homemade fabric tissues I made last year are getting a workout! I love that using hankies gives no waste, and a massive stack of them means they can go in the wash after each use, therefore taking out the thing that gives hankies a bad name - lugging around a dirty hanky for repeated uses and therefore building up a pocket full of cold germs....ew!

Now I'm no germaphobe, but the snotty hanky in the pocket thing is really yucky, so I don't send hankies to school with my kids, and I don't carry them with me either, so when out and about, we use paper tissues. But being light paper, they're prone to tearing up of you just shove a handful in your pocket. That's why those clever marketing folks creating the mini packets of tissues. Great idea! But they're expensive and wrapped in plastic .... that is nearly as "ew" as the snotty hankies!

I needed a solution, and so this morning, while listening to early morning coughing and nose blowing, I decided to whip up these little mini tissue pouches and managed to make two in about 30minutes AND remembered to take photos* so I could show you how I did it! All before a cup of tea -are you impressed? ;)

 

*my camera has started playing up, so for the time being all photos are being taken on my iPod - apologies for the poor quality.

OK, so here is a quickly put together tutorial on how to make them. They're pretty straight forward, but yell out if anything needs clarifying.

You will need:

• Some fabric scraps cut into the following shapes (I used pinking shears so they wouldn't fray)
• One 13 x 9cm rectangle and Two 13 x 6cm rectangles
• A zip (longer than about 15cm)
• A sewing machine with a zipper foot, matching thread and the basic sewing gear (scissors, pins, iron etc)

1. Once you've cut out your pieces, take the two smaller pieces and iron over just under 1cm on one of the long sides of each.

2. Pin the folded over edges onto your zip. You want the fold close to the teeth and both pieces of fabric lined up. Make sure the right side of your fabric is facing up. Pin them in the middle of your zip - we'll be cutting off the long ends soon.

3. Use your sewing machine to stitch the zip to the fabric. You will need to move the zipper tag along the way - do this by making sure that the needle is down, then lift the foot and slide the tag along, then lower the foot and keep sewing. Sew both sides so you now have a rectangle with a zip down the middle.

4. Slide the zipper tag down so that it is open about 3/4 of the way down your fabric. Then with right sides together, pin your larger piece of fabric to the back. Make sure your open zip ends are pinned close to one another so the zip will close when it's all sewn up. Note that your zippered section might be a bit bigger than your backing piece. If that's the case, just trim them to the same size.

5. Now simply sew all the way around your little rectangle, making nice neat corners and sewing straight over the ends of the zip.

6. Trim the zipper ends and corners of the rectangle, then turn it all right side out through the zipper.

7. Iron flat and your done!

If your tissue pouch is for school, you might consider ironing on a name tag so it is less likely to get lost (update - Lachie came home tonight "I've lost my tissue case!"  I was furious!  But then a kid knocked on the door, he'd found it and returned it - the name touch was worth it). To fill the pouch, fold tissues in half and then in three, stack together. You should be able to fit in 6 tissues, just stuff in the folded pile. The other nice thing about these pouches is that they can be thrown in the wash occasionally.

Now make one for all your kids in personalised fabrics and a pretty one for your handbag too :). Have fun!