Make Your Own Travel Chopstick Case

Although this technically falls under the crafting category of "things you didn't know you needed," it is still a really cute idea. The premise is that instead of wasting a pair of disposable chopsticks every time you go out to eat you carry along your own pair.

There are other designs floating around for these cases which inspired my design (and those might have better instructions if you are looking for a really precise tutorial). Although you can make these with one piece of fabric I wanted mine to have a contrasting interior so I started with two sets of fabric to make two cases:


Here is where I have to make a confession about where I got the fabric: I bought it at Walmart. I usually try to reuse or recycle fabric as much as possible but I was really picky about the prints I wanted for these and Walmart has this new section of fat quarters for quilting which has some surprisingly modern patterns.

Out of each set I cut one of each of these shapes:


(You'll see later why the outside piece is larger than the inside piece.)

I then pinned them together with the right sides facing each other and sewed along the bottom (leaving a gap large enough to flip it right side out later):


I then pulled the shorter side up so the points of both pieces met (but it is still inside out):


Here it is pinned together:


I sewed all the way along the remaining sides and trimmed off some excess fabric at the corners:


Now the case is ready to flip inside out (so the right sides of the fabric are on the outside now). The last major step was to sew the opening closed and then fold the bottom up to where it begins to angle towards the point and sew that down on either end.


This is what one end looks like:


The reason I made the outside piece bigger than the inside was that if they had been the same the seam would have come out at the top of the little bit you folded up and I thought it would look neater if it was on the inside. So essentially it is being hidden on the inside of the little pouch you make.

Now all you need is something to keep it rolled up. I sewed a piece of ribbon on the outside of the point and added a button over it to cover my messy hand stitching. I folded the ends of the ribbon over and sewed those down to keep them from unraveling.


Slip in the chopsticks and its ready to be rolled up.


I didn't give you dimensions for how big to make it because it really depends on the chopsticks you get. The ones I found are actually children's chopsticks that I got at a local Asian produce store. I specifically got the children's sets because they are much smaller and therefore more conducive to being lugged around in a purse all the time. Here's a closeup of the chopsticks, they're actually very cute:


Here it is all rolled up and ready to go:


I ended up making three of them. The top one was the test run so I'm keeping that one but the other two are gifts.


Here's the button from the bottom one, it came in a bag of vintage red buttons. It's a face!


Hopefully these came out sturdy enough that they can be thrown in the wash after they are used.

So those are my kind of instructions. If anything isn't clear feel free to ask and I'll attempt to explain!