Simple shoe organizer

Do you trip over your children's shoes when you kiss them goodnight? (When you kiss the children, that is, not the shoes.)

Me too.

I used to see shoe bags in the stores. Back when I went to stores. I even have one hanging in the girls' bathroom. But it has a job holding hair ribbons and styling products. Also it is floral, and Madeleine and Sarah are so over a floral bedroom. (Good thing I can still inflict my Laura Ashley sensibilities on the younger two girls.)

So. I measured the bathroom hair ribbon holder and lo and behold decided after that exhausting research that I could sew a shoe holder for the big girls' Saltwater sandals and Converse sneakers, thus saving my toes from bumping into random objects on their floor at night.

(Your obligatory Suite aside: Boots, in this household, are another matter entirely. The Western boots we Suite girls collect basically need their own room. And even if you never, ever click over, you should click on that first one. It's all about me growing a pair. A-hem.)

Without further ado I started hacking up some feedsacks from the abundance of horse feed we go through around here. The colors work with the big girls' room and the theme is certainly appropriate. In case you've not run across this type of feedsack, I'm also known to sew grocery sacks and bookbags from it. It has the feel of oilcloth, it's washable and wipable, and the colors are very vibrant. Also, it's free. First I cut strips twice the width of the vintage pillowcase that I used for the back of the whole shebang. I could have used another feedsack but the girls liked the way this looked together.

Then I pinned the strips down the left and right side in mostly even rows. I sewed using a zig zag stitch for strength.

Then I found the center of each strip and pinned it down. I sewed one long row from top of the shoe holder to the bottom, right down the middle. This left me with big loopy pieces of feedsack strip to the left and right. I I found the center of those and pinned them down, repeating the long row of stitches from top to bottom.

For the final steps I had to make the horizontal rows of feedsack strips into pockets. To do this I pleated and pinned the bottoms only of each row, leaving the tops open to accept shoes.

The hardest part was the pleating. And don't get me wrong: it's not that hard. I started out by measuring and pinning but ended up, in my usual degage way, just eyeballing the pocket pleats. It worked out fine.

I don't have a grommet thingamajig so I used some heavy-duty webbing, sewn in place in smallish loops. Then I hung it from over-the-door hooks.

I think I'll go do a happy dance in the middle of their floor. Right after I find a solution for the boots.

i