This is a great project for scraps. I recommend making two of these so that you have a spare when you wash the other. My pattern is for a Sonicare toothbrush, you may need to adjust for your own toothbrush. I don’t have any different toothbrushes to try it on and make a new pattern for, but it’s pretty basic. Just measure around your brush and add your seam allowance in.
Materials:
- Outer material: I use cotton or flannel.
- Inner material: This needs to be absorbent material such as flannel or terry cloth.
- Snaps, snap pliers/press, awl
- Thread, sewing machine, etc.
- Pattern (mine is located here)
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Step 1: Use your pattern to cut your inner and outer fabric. |
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Step 2: Iron |
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Step 3: Pin two pieces right sides together. |
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Step 5: Clip each corner, taking care not to snip the stitching. Cut off excess fabric. |
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Step 6: Turn right sides out. Make sure to poke the edges out (I use chopsticks- carefully).
Step 7: Fold in the fabric where you turned it. |
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Step 8: Iron it down and pin. |
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Step 9: Topstitch all around the cover, closing up the opening. |
Step 10: Now I hold up my cover to the toothbrush that I’m going to use it on. It looks like it is the right size, but I need to make the top pointy to help keep water from just dripping down. I figured out a way to do this, THEN had to figure out what the technique was called. I really need sewing classes. I believe the technique is called “darts” (darting?). I think it’s used for clothes, but hey… It works.
As my description of this is probably going to suck, here’s a link to a blog that explains sewing darts.
What you’re going to do for this is fold the cover right sides together and sew a diagonal line… I made a mark 1″ down and a little over a 1/2″ over and then connected the lines. Backstitch over each edge. This creates a little triangle on the inside of the cover.
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This is how it looks on the outside, after you do this. |
Now you can try it on you toothbrush again- it should be pointier now. You will need to do this 2-3 times around the top of your cover to make it the right size. I just keep testing it to see if it fits yet. It might be possible to transfer the dart info (as well as the snap placement) to the pattern, but I prefer to do them as I go because I want it to be as tight as possible when finished and I think we all have different levels of success sticking to the exact seam allowance all the way around (specifically, I have a low level of success at this).
Another option: One thing I tried was doing the darts first to each piece of material (matching darts exactly), then sewing right sides together, turning and top stitching. It works, but I was hoping for a nicer finished product (no raw edge)… I thought it didn’t look as nice though afterwards because the darts look more attractive if you don’t sew over them like you have to, doing it that way.
Step 11: You should have a mostly complete cover now that fits around the toothbrush. All you have to do now is add snaps. You’ll need 2 sets of snaps for the shorter cover and 3 sets for the longer one.
I pull my cover tight around the toothbrush…
As you can see above, you want the two “male” studs on the inner fabric (both studs and sockets each attach to a cap) and two “female” sockets on the outer fabric.
Here’s a few views of the final product:
And here are a couple others that I completed (I prefer the look of flannel inner vs. terrycloth inner, and it’s a little easier to sew/mark):
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