Hand Sanitizer Holder SewingTutorial

This would make a wonderful gift!  Attach it to your purse, diaper bag, loop over a door handle, hang it in the kitchen or bathroom—there are many uses for it, and the fact that the cap is always exposed means you can quickly use it when you need to.  Attaching it to your purse also means you won’t be digging for it anymore:). 

It uses just a few small scraps of fabric, so you likely have everything you need already.  


While I was shopping on Black Friday with some family, we stopped at Bath and Body Works and bought some yummy lotions.  They had the cute little hand sanitizers with these rubber-like holders that you just put around your purse strap or whatever you want it to be.  As soon as I saw it I thought, “I’m totally going to make one of those with fabric!” 




So the one I used that will have more specific measurements is a tad over 4” tall, and about 2” wide. 

It looks like a lengthy tutorial, but it comes together rather quickly.  I just have two different options at one point in the tutorial.


You’ll need:
-two 2” x 18” strips fabric—you could totally use a couple different fabrics that match, which would be really cute.
-at least one button—doesn’t matter what size, and you can also have more than one button
-either two strips 7” x 1.5”, 1” piece velcro, a rolled flower (or a ruffle for this part) OR ribbon, however long you’d like it to be to tie around the sanitizer

-UPDATE:  you should definitely iron on some fusible interfacing to strengthen the button holes.  You can just iron a 2" x 18" piece of interfacing  onto one of the same size strips you cut.  This way, your button hole won't rip, causing the bottle to fall out over time as it gets stretched more and more.  Also, the tighter the fit, the better off you will be!

**to adjust the sizes for the smaller bottles, take off an inch of the long strips, and a 1/2” of the shorter ones.  EXAMPLE: for the smallest Bath and Body Works size of bottle, the strips are 2” x 16”, then the shorter ones are 6” x 1.5” (unless using ribbon).  You will need to adjust the button hole size for the Bath and Body Works size only.**


Start with the two long strips.  Pin them right sides together, and sew with a 1/4” seam, leaving one of the ends open for turning.

Clip corners, turn, fold in the opening, iron, and top-stich around the entire thing.

Place the long strip around the sides of the bottle you are using, turn over, and mark in the middle of the lid portion onto the fabric.

This is your middle of the buttonhole for the cap of the sanitizer bottle to fit into.  So mark a 1.5” line with the marking you already made in the center of it.

Now sew a button-hole that is 1.5” long.  My buttonhole foot does NOT go that big, so I used Grosgrain’s awesome tutorial here on how to do a buttonhole without the button-hole foot.  If you are uncomfortable doing a button-hole, practice a couple times with Kathleen’s great tutorial.  I watched it again before making this, just so that I would have it down.  Because sometimes buttonholes just stink. Mine isn’t perfect, but it will do. 

And just in case you have the same size bottle as me, my buttonhole measured down as follows on my long strip:

Um, nice camera strap!

Use your seam ripper and cut the buttonhole.  See how your bottle cap just slips nicely into that?

Now at this point you could just center your ribbon onto the strap and sew onto the back side of what you see here, then tie a knot/bow and skip the next few steps.

OR, you could take these pieces you have and make a velcro strap.  It’s probably a little more secure and guaranteed that the bottle won’t fall out this way, but the ribbon is an easy option if time is a factor.

Take the two 7” x 1.5” pieces, pin right sides together and sew 1/4” seam, leaving one end open for turning.  Clip corners and turn.

Tuck in the end, iron, and topstitch.

Sew the velcro onto opposites sides of the strap.  You can sew a ruffle onto the strap at this point if you’d like to.

Find out where you want the strap to fall on your bottle, then sew onto the strap with one line of stitches.

At this point you can sew or glue a rolled flower where desired.

OK, so now this is where you’ll come back in if you used the ribbon.  Put the bottle into the holder and measure where you want to sew the top part together as pictured in the next 4 pictures.


Sew a button-hole onto the piece that extends from the bottle.  You can use your buttonhole foot this time, depending on the size of button you use.

Sew the button on where you would like it, making sure that the loop you create can fit around a purse strap or whatever you will be securing it around.  You can add another button for an adjustable loop if you want.  I hid my threads between the two layers of fabric so you can’t see it on the other side, but just in case I went through, I used matching thread.