sew organized with rifle paper co

Raise your hand if you've ever spent hours drooling over all of the goodies that Rifle Paper Co. has to offer 👋👋

Their calendars have always been an item on my wishlist. Especially the "Maps" calendars. They speak to my need to organize and my love of travel! 

You're probably wondering what on earth I could have to talk about Rifle Paper Co. on a sewing blog (unless you know a lot about fabric collections)

Well, Rifle Paper Co. now has fabric!! 😀 Let's all do a happy dance!

I came across their collection by Cotton & Steel at Hawthorne Threads a few months back and just gave my husband a little hint and told him that I'd love to have any one of the prints on the page that showed off their entire "Les Fleurs" collection. 

When Christmas morning came, I unwrapped a beautiful three yards of this "City Maps" print from the Les Fleurs collection. 💗 


I spent the next week or so scouring Pinterest and Instagram for inspiration for how I was going to use it. I knew pretty much right off the bat that I wanted to make something travel related. A little obvious? I don't care. I love traveling and I love this print!

I started off planning to make a bag. I wanted to make a backpack that I could take on our upcoming trip in a few weeks. But, I didn't have about 2/3 of the materials and tools needed, so I decided I needed to make something that I already had everything I needed to make. 

So, I thought about our most recent trip and what I wished I would have had with me. 

A dirty clothes bag! 

Seriously, on every trip I take, I am constantly wishing I had planned for a way to keep our dirty clothes separate from our clean ones. I always end up just throwing everything back in at the end of the trip and then throwing all of it in a big pile at the house and rewashing a bunch of clean clothes. I don't like it. 

So, I looked around at some ideas for laundry bags and decided to go for a drawstring bag. I crunched a few numbers, made some cuts and these babies were born...


I love them! After I cut out the fabric for the first one (the large) I knew I was going to want more of them. I decide to make them in varying sizes so that I could use them for organizing other things in our suitcase. I ended up making a small, medium and two large. 


Each of them has the peach drawstrings which were made from fabric that was given to me by my Mamaw when she was cleaning out some of her fabric stash. 




I am so glad I made multiple sizes. I plan to use one (or both) of the large ones for our dirty clothes. I figured out that I can fit a pair of my sandals in the small one.


Or the diffuser for my hair dryer...



I am also probably going to use the medium one for my hair dryer, straightener, brush, etc. These are all of the things that never seem to have a "place" in the suitcase. 


I'll also be using one for my husband's shoes. Now I don't have to worry about the shoes getting scuffed or getting dirt on our clothes. 


I cannot wait to pack all these babies up with us when we go to DISNEY WORLD! 

Here's a few things I took away from this project that I'll remember when I make more of these:

1. It finally pushed me to order a cutting mat, ruler, and rotary cutter! Yay for straight cuts!

2. I will lengthen the amount of bias tape us use on the medium and large bags in order to have more of the string hanging out when it's fully open. 

3. I will double check what is at the bottom of the print I am using. In order to make the bags have a "bottom", I boxed them out a few inches and when I did that it took off the city names that I originally intended to include. Poor Tokyo got left out :( Next time, I'll make sure to include that when I am taking measurements and cutting. 

4. I'll consider lining the bag with something water repellent in order to use one for wet/dirty baby clothes. Although, the bags are completely machine washable so they could still be used for that and then washed afterwards with everything else. 

Thanks for reading! 

What's your favorite way to stay organized while you travel? Share in the comments! (especially if it's about staying organized with toddlers!)

If you'd like to see more posts like this, make sure you subscribe!
For more pictures, follow me on Instagram @jaylynpace_handmade. 


*******

This post was linked up at:






Comments

Popular Posts