…diffuser travel case…

There is something enchantingly motivating about a disgustingly spotlessly clean craft room. Nary a loose thread to be seen on the floor, no scraps of paper floating around the desk, exactly zero tails of yarn trailing from the basket on the bottom shelf. So stinkin’ spotless I willingly allowed people in to photograph it to share with strangers. AND, for bonus points, I kept it that way for over a week. Honestly, I was on the verge of losing my sense of self-identity with this bizarre out of character behaviour. The solution, obviously, was to get stuck in and mess it all up again.

For quite a long time now, I’ve wanted to make a diffuser travel case. Whenever we travel, the diffuser and oils are one of the first things to be packed, and I would like something a bit fancier than “shove the diffuser on the top of the suitcase and stick socks around it. I’ve surfed Pinterest a few times, with not a lot grabbing my attention. It all felt very generic and same same. Not to mention, they mainly catered to a round diffuser, and my favourite diffuser is more of a tall oval. While cruising my craft room, looking for inspiration, it suddenly hit me – what if I hacked the Maker’s Tote pattern, to super-minimize it (it already comes with a small size, but I needed it even smaller), to hold my diffuser, and then adjust the exterior pocket to hold a handful of 5mL bottles. This idea, friends, was pure crafting genius.

Look at it’s cute little self!! It is such a sweet little make, just the right size for my doterra Lumo. I made the outside from some Echino linen I have had in my stash for a ridiculous number of years, and I fussy cut it to maxmise the printed segments, to create a sweet combination of three “separate” but co-ordinating fabrics. The lining is cut from the same length of linen that I purchased for my morning stitches project, the interfacing I had on hand, as too the elastic for inside the pocket. With so much from stash, it was the perfect weekend make – cute, functional, quick(ish) and cheap!

The hardest part was the binding and handles. In an effort to preserve the remainder of my fabric, I didn’t want to make my own binding, and instead had hoped to find a premade hot pink bias binding. No such luck. Instead, I went with a soft beige that toned in with the linen. Not ideal, but I think in the end, it worked, and on the upside, it keeps the focus on the fabrics, and allows the punch of pink in the gusset to really stand out. Then, of course, I had thought it would be soooooo easy to get hot pink grosgrain ribbon. How do you think I went with that? Yep. Fail there too. The pink satin we ended up picking isn’t quite the right pink, but it was closer than the “teal” option, and I really didn’t want a brown, having already settled for beige binding. On the upside, the zip was not a problem, and we ended deciding to grab a teal button to bring back some of the colour, instead of the brown I had planned to use, and managed to find one that was pretty spot on.

The only other change I would make would be to allow a more generous loop of elastic in the oil pocket. I only measured where to stitch it down, not how much I was allowing, and simply eyeballed the bubble I would leave between each line. I had thought I’d left enough, but they ended up being quite firm -which I guess isn’t a bad thing when we are talking about glass bottles!

It was such a fun way to mess up my craft room (without requiring a whole heap of post-crafting-tidy-up), while knocking an item off my to-make list and using up some stash.

MAIN HACKS:
Change size of exterior and lining pieces to cut them 7.75″ x 8″ (interfacing also adjusted accordingly)
Change size of gusset pieces to cut at 6″ x 3.5″
Handles – 1.5″ ribbon.
Remove all interior pockets
Remove exterior welt pocket
Add pleated exterior pocket with 6x 1″ wide elastic loops for 6x 5mL bottles

Original pattern can be found in Noodlehead’s online shop here.

My original maker’s tote (which I still love and use constantly) can be found here.

For more info on my favourite diffusers and what I use in them, check out my oily facebook page or my shop.

HACKING ANOTHER PATTERN:

This was an easy hack, as the narrow depth of the diffuser and curved sides was ideally suited to the design of the pattern I was using. To hack a pattern for resizing generally, my suggested plan of attack:

Measure the item you want to hold (or otherwise calculate your desired finished size)
Read the instructions thoroughly, so you can see what each piece does and where it fits
Study both the finished size details of the pattern, and the cutting guide, for a clear picture of how various pieces fit together and affect the finished size
Identify the dimensions that require adjusting, and then identify the pieces that need to change.
Double check the pattern to be sure you have adjusted all the pieces along the changed dimension.
Don’t forget to account for seam allowance (if you are adding/removing seams), adjusting any inset zips or pocket placements, and also some ease to your measurements – you don’t want the finished product so snug you can’t get your item in or out.

We’ve had a big day of school out of doors today – the weather is finally starting to cool down so we are making the most of it and getting some fresh air while powering through our lessons. I’ve managed to get some crochet done while supervising, but forgot my scissors so that got put aside in favour of my book. We got home early to whip up some watermelon coconut sorbet, thanks to an influx of garden grown watermelons. Stage one is chilling in the frezzer while I enjoy a wee slice of my mum’s chocolate cake and finishing up this post. Now. Time to clean up my craft room from this weekend’s project…but maybe I just read this last chapter first. You know, make sure there are no loose ends to distract me from my cleaning. That’s the best idea, isn’t it?