Cosmetic Cases Are In Plastic; It's Fantastic

Over a year ago my sister asked me to sew her a vanity case and a makeup brush storage case, using tutorials that she flipped me links for via Pinterest's messaging system. My sister isn't really a crafter, having never gotten beyond the beginner levels of sewing, knitting, etc., and doesn't often make things herself. But then I suppose why would she when she can just put in an order with me or our mother and have whatever she wants custom made for a birthday or Christmas present? It's a system that works quite well for her if she doesn't mind a relatively long lead time.

But I was game to make her the cosmetics set, and I asked her what kind of colour scheme she wanted. She told me "black outside, and a colourful fabric inside". Okay then. I went to Fabricland, found their vinyl laminate, and batting for inside the brush case, then found some black fabric and double fold black bias tape. When I then looked for a bright print that would look good with the black, I found the above hot pink print on the clearance table, with its cute print of beads and little silhouetted heads. I wasn't sure how my sister would feel about the hot pink but hey, it was colourful, she didn't specify colour, and she had told me in the past that the only colour she really didn't like was lime green.

But once I got the fabric home and began working with it, the unfortunate truth began to dawn on me.

The fabric was Barbie fabric. I had bought Barbie fabric to make a makeup brush case and vanity case for my 42-year-old sister, and she was probably going to be less than thrilled about it. I wanted to kick myself for not having clued in faster, but at the same time... it was hilarious.

By the time I realized the true nature of the fabric it was too late to turn back; I'd made the vanity case, and it was a bit of pain I wasn't willing to go through again soon. The vanity case instructions don't call for covering the lining with vinyl laminate, but I did anyway. I know from experience that vanity cases get stained on the inside with makeup, and that it looks bad. The laminate made the project slightly more difficult to turn inside out, and I left the turning gap on the bottom seam of the *outer* fabric rather than on the bottom seam of the *lining fabric* as the instructions say, so that I wouldn't have to handsew laminated fabric. I was able to slip stitch the bottom seam closed very unobtrusively.

The next step was making the makeup brush case. The instructions only called for laminating the bottom layer of fabric, but I laminated the pocket too, as it would be likely to get some makeup on it as well. The project went pretty smoothly, as the Sew4Home tutorial is well-written. I did have difficulty sewing on the bias tape, and never was able to get the machine to stitch around the corners properly. After several attempts I just said screw it, ripped out the corners a final time and then stitched them in place by hand, working one side of each corner at a time -- a time-consuming job, but I got the results I wanted.

The finished set. At least the cases look the way they're supposed to look from the outside. My plan for Christmas morning present time is to see whether my sister notices the Barbie heads or not. If she doesn't, that will allow her to decide whether she likes the set without prejudice. If she does start to figure out that something's amiss, I suppose that'll be my cue to bolt for safety. Either way I'll probably have to promise her a new, non-Barbie set a few years down the road to smooth things over. My sister is not a Barbie girl in a Barbie world.

ETA: I gave my sister this pair of cosmetic cases for Christmas, and she neither figured out that it was Barbie fabric on her own nor seem to care when I told her it was. She seemed reasonably pleased with this set -- not as pleased as she was with the Sherlock fangirl kit I gave her two years before, but pleased enough.