Christmas Road Trip!

Time to take a break from all the blocks-of-the-week/fortnight/month!  Time to just stitch up a couple of little projects.

Headrest Totes

My two grandsons, ages 3 and 6, are headed from Memphis to Miami for Christmas (with my daughter and SIL, of course).  Everyone's going to need some distraction!  The other day I pulled some scraps and whipped up a couple of little bags to hang over the headrests in the car to store toys and books during the journey.

I still have to stitch down the "handles" that slip over the headrests, and haven't quite figured out how to enable the 3-year-old to reach his bag.  The strips I used for the handles are actually a bit long, so I think I'll just leave one end flapping in the breeze.  He can reach it with this foot and grab it to get at his stash.  Things were so much easier when we were left to create havoc and risk bodily injury in the back seat.

 

 CD Holders

So while I was making the headrest totes for the boys, I decided to make some car visor CD holders for the grown-ups.  I found this pattern a while ago at http://pukingpastilles.com/?p=517.

You can make it almost entirely with scraps.  Cut either 22 4-1/2" by 6" pieces or 11 9" by 6" pieces.  Half will be the back of each CD envelope and won't show.  You'll also need a couple of longer pieces for the backing and some seriously stiff interfacing.

Guy colors

Girl colors

For the "envelopes" I cut the smaller pieces and sewed them together.  In retrospect I think it would be better to use the larger pieces and just fold them over -- no pesky seam along the top of each edge, no ironing the seams.

The pattern calls for a stiff fusible interfacing (I found some at Joann fabrics, not exactly what the pattern called for, though).  Fuse one backing piece to the interfacing.  Then align your "envelope" pieces according to the pattern and stitch them down, one at a time, along the width of the interfacing.  I recommend switching to a sturdy (No. 14 or 16) needle for this.

One problem I found was that the long, stiff interfacing wouldn't fit under my machine when I sewed the first piece on.  I had to turn it around and negotiate the 1/4" seam.  I'm used to using the right side of the foot as a guide, so it was a bit awkward.  After the first piece it was fine.

After you've sewed all the pieces on the front, fuse the backing piece to the other side of the interfacing (talk about using up your scraps; ugly works here!)  The interfacing I found was fusible only on one side, so I dragged out my roll of Stitch-witchery to fuse the back.  Then sew a couple of strips of elastic to the back.

I found that the positioning of the elastic in the pattern instructions wouldn't work for my car, and I have no idea how it would work in my daughter's or son-in-law's cars.  So I just guessed...  (insert crossed fingers here!)

The last step is to bind the edges.  I just used double-fold bias binding that I picked up at my local Ace hardware store!  Shop locally is my motto! 

There's nothing elegant about these, but they were fun to make and I think they will be useful.