Easy toy bag for the car.

When the back seat of our car started looking something like this...



I decided to make this:

{Bonus: any craft that requires swinging a hammer really hard is worth trying}.
This is a quick and easy toy bag that I made from a pillow sham that came as a set with a comforter we registered for when we got married. I don't know what we were thinking--we don't have a guest room and rarely use this comforter, let alone pillow shams. I originally thought I'd just fold the bottom of the sham up about 3/4 of the way and sew it up the sides to make 3 pockets. Then I'd add grommets and some kind or rope or ribbon to secure it to the back of the front seat in our car.

My husband warned me the toy bag would be too wide, but I didn't listen.He was right. After fussing with a floppy bag that toys just fell right out of, I decided to cut the slightly altered sham in half:

All I had to do was fold the newly cut side in about 1/4 of an inch and iron it, then sew it back up.
I then had to get out my most useful and most often used sewing tool, the seam ripper:If you are a beginner sewer and you don't have one of these, get one. I am quite good at ripping seams gone wrong out and the whole process feels productive for some reason--I think because it still feels like I'm sewing, even when I'm un-sewing. Anyway, I ripped out the existing seam that gave the original sham a wide, decorative edge in order to make my 1/2 of a toy bag wide enough to hold something. I decided to sew a ribbon (that probably wrapped up this wedding gift in the first place) down the left side of the bag to cover up the ripped out seam. Finally, I secured the bag to the neck rest of the front seat by looping nylon rope through grommets that I had a lot of fun hammering in. I need to burn the ends of the rope to keep it from fraying more, but the baby is always with me when I go to the car and burning something next to him doesn't sound like a good idea. I'll just have to wait on that step.

In the meantime, the new bag isn't perfect, but it was basically free to make and it's helped the clutter. It holds a few books in the front pocket and a few small toys in the larger pocket. I have another sham and I think I could improve on this design. I'll share it with you depending. If it really does turn out better, my sister just may get one in the mail.

Don't feel like sewing up a perfectly good pillow sham? Check out this way cute organizer from SewnNatural on Etsy. (She's a slightly better sewer than I am):