1 Yard Project Session 5: Couch Caddy

So now we're moving to the living room, and we're gonna make a fun project that I'm calling your couch caddy. And this is something that can hold your book, your remote, maybe your glasses, just something you want always by you in your chair when you're watching TV at your couch. Or if you find that you're always misplacing the remote this is a way you can just sort of always have it near your chair and you know where it's at. So it has a couple of pockets. You can obviously see one's for a book, one's for the remote and then a much longer strip of fabric.

So if you picture this is on your couch, this is going to hang over on one side and this is gonna go down on next to you when you sit. Now, I've used this on a couple different pieces of furniture in my house. The first one was my couch. So that's where I've based my measurements off of, and it's has very tall sides to it. So I have this whole side that hangs down, and then this side that hangs on the inside by where I sit and I had sort of a weight problem, 'cause my book was really heavy and it kept falling off.

So I made a nifty little pocket here on the bottom that I just fill up a little bag full of sand or you can even use marbles, a heavy rock, whatever you want to sort of balance out the weights. So you have that pocket on the end. The other chair that I use it on has much shorter sides. So I actually tuck about six inches of this under the actual cushion and that holds it nice and place. So you could use the same measurements that I use for a chair or a couch.

And you could either fill it with sand if you had to or tuck it under the cushion. But I think these measurements would work either way, whichever size your furniture may be. So to make this, it's really fairly easy and requires just a few pieces. Our first one is our actual long strips of fabric. This is about seven inches wide, and one of them is 42 inches long.

And one of them is 35 inches long and there will be a pattern for this whole project that you can download as a PDF so don't worry about trying to have to write down or remember the measurements that I'm telling you. You'll be able to print that off and look at it. So again, I have my long strips of fabric here that I've already cut. And then I have two pieces that I cut that are going to be pockets. I have one that's 10 inches by 10 inches and one that is eight and a half by nine and a half inches.

And those are, again, my two pockets. I have a lower one and an upper one. And the first thing I'm gonna do is finish the upper edges of my pockets. So you can see, I already have one done here and I've just done a very simple double fold hem. That's about three eighths of an inch and I've already stitched one in place.

I have one pinned and ready to stitch. So I'm gonna take that to my machine and do that now. Take my pins out when I get to them. Okay, and I didn't worry about a back stitch because this is going to be enclosed in the actual side seams when I stitch this together. So I don't need to worry about it.

So now my pocket pieces are ready. I can do a little bit of prep work to my long pieces and then we can actually put it together. So for your long pieces, even if you think that your couch cushions maybe aren't- Or sorry, the arms of your couches aren't that tall and you'll be able to tuck it under the couch cushion. It's still a good idea to go ahead and make the little pocket that you can put the weight in just in case you have a balance problem. It doesn't hurt to have it there.

So on the piece that is longer, this is the one that was, we have two strips, one slightly longer than the other. On the longer of the two strips, we're going to do the same double fold hem that we just did for the pocket. And the reason we did that is because when we actually go to stitch this together, we are just going to fold this up, sorry, fold it under. And this is going to be our little pocket section when we actually put this together. But before we do that, we need to actually put on our pockets.

So let me bring back in my finished guy so I can show you what's cool about our pockets is that I didn't want them to be just flat, because if I'm putting a remote or especially a book, I mean, there's some, some thickness to them. So I wanted the pockets to stand out a bit. So I actually had some room to work with putting something into my pockets. So to do that, all I did was add pleats at the bottom. So what I mean is we have our strip of fabric here and I've got my pocket.

This is my larger pocket, my 10 inch by 10 inch one. And I'm going to line it up on the lower edge just to kinda know where it's going to sit and I'm gonna bring my edges in. I'm going to start pinning right along the edge. You can see the fabric already is naturally sort of folding in place. That's kinda where my pleat's gonna go anyway.

So that's perfect. Put some pins in like so. Do the same thing on the other side, like this. Okay. And now I know where my lower pocket is gonna be.

You don't wanna stitch this yet because I'm sort of just laying everything out. We're going to need to put our other pocket wherever you want it to be up here. Now, I kinda liked that mine were overlapped. So what I will probably do is decide I want this maybe hidden down under there just a little bit. It's really up to you.

You could make two totally separate pockets, finish under that end, and put this one all the way up here. It depends on if you want your pocket stacked or not. So I'm just going to demonstrate on this one pocket but you're going to put them on and construct them the exact same way. So either pocket that you're working with whether it's up here, down here, you want to pin along the sides. And then I want to find about the center of my pocket, lay it down, and then fold out towards the edges like so.

And once I have it sort of held in place I'm gonna get my ruler 'cause I do want 'em to be even. So this one, it's about an inch and a quarter from the edge. That one. That's even on the first try, look at that. So now I can take an adjust my pins and hold those little pleats in place like so and now I have a pocket that sort of is open and very easy to just drop something into.

Again, you would do the same thing on your upper pocket. If you decided you wanted to layer them, like I did with this one, start with the upper one, then place your bottom one. Or again, you could stack them one on top of the other but so either way, you're gonna do the same thing and create those little pleats on the bottom of your pockets. And now we get to stitch our two long pieces together. So all I'm gonna do is layer these right sides together and stitch all the way around the outside edge.

And I am just going to leave these pins in place and layer over the top of them. I'm not worried about stitching that ahead of time. I don't think there's a reason why you need to sort of double stitch that area. But if you wanted to, you could. I don't think it's necessary, but I'm just gonna put some pins in and it's as easy as this all you're doing is putting it right sides together.

You're gonna take probably more time pinning around the perimeter and stitching around the perimeter than you did planning out any of your project. So I'm just gonna keep placing pins all the way around here. And then when I have it all pinned, we'll come back and I'll show you how we can stitch it. So I've put my pins in all the way around the lower edge and the long sides and now I'm to my area where I have to deal with the fact that one strip was longer than the other. And I'm forming my little weight pocket at the bottom.

So you can see, I have one piece that is the short piece. This one is my longer one. All I'm gonna do is fold this longer piece under to where the bottom edge now lines up as if they were the same length. And that's all you have to do. Just fold that under.

We'll pin it in place. And then we're going to stitch, and I'm gonna show you what I did on the side too with a couple different pins to just help me remember that I'm stitching something sort of long and almost monotonous. And you can kinda just get in the rhythm of sewing and forget that you need to leave an opening. So you can actually turn this right side out. So I have two giant pins that are start here, stop here.

This is gonna leave me in opening so I can go ahead and turn that right set out when I'm done. So I'm gonna take it over to my machine and just stitch. Very easy, stitching nothing to it. I'm about a half inch from the edge. That's the seam allowance that I'm using.

I'm gonna go ahead and put a back stitch in just because when I actually have my hand in there and I'm trying to turn this right side out, I don't wanna be pulling any stitches. So I do want to backstitch there. Get to the edge. I'm going to go ahead and pivot, moving all this fabric around and just keep continuing pivoting at all corners and stitch all the way around the outside edge. Okay, I'm almost done.

Last corner. And I've reached my other really large pin. That's my signal to stop. I'm gonna go ahead and do a back stitch and I can take it off. We're going to trim some corners and then turn it right side out.

So it's pretty standard when you're doing any sort of, you know, sewing of squares or turning any corners that when you have to turn it right side out, you want to clip those corners. So it makes it a little bit easier to actually get a point. Otherwise you're gonna have sort of just this rounded edge that doesn't look quite as crisp as if you trimmed them. So going around, trimming all my corners and now I'm ready to turn it right side out. Now, if you remember, when we put our pocket on, we actually put some pins in place that are still in there.

When I made this the first time I forgot about those and I just reached right down in there. So remember those pins are still there and carefully grab the edge and pull it back out to turn it right side out. So just don't forget they're there. And once you turn it right side out, then you can take all those little pins out that were holding our pocket in place. It's always a nice little surprise when you find a pin that you didn't know you left in there.

Get all those guys out and then you can use either your scissors or, this is my hem gauge and it's actually a point turning tool as well. And just use something to go down into your corners and press them out so it looks nice and neat. So you've got quite a few layers actually down here with our two layers of fabric and then we've got our pocket. So just make sure you're not pressing too hard that you're gonna press through the fabric or in any way tear your seams, but you just still wanna make sure that you're getting a nice corner. There we go.

Get that pressed out. Do our other side as well. Okay, and you can see how our little weight pocket sort of just magically forms with the way we folded under the fabric. And just stitched that in place. Again, all of our pockets, our weight pocket, the one or two or however many pockets you decide to add on the front, all of those get stitched in place while you're actually doing the one long continuous stitch all the way around the outside edge.

So you can add as many pockets to this thing as you want, actually. You don't have to stop at just two, you can add tons. So now you are just about done. All you have to do is secure your opening closed. So to do that, you would take this and you're going to press it.

Now you would be pressing the seams flat anyway. So I sort of just roll the seam with my finger so I know I'm getting it flat. You can finger press it first. Use your iron. Go all the way around.

Kinda go over your gap a little. Go to the other side of it, pressing all the way around like that. And then do you have that done on either side of your gap. if you just take and you stick your fingers into the gap like this, and you sort of pull back a little, you can see that the fabric naturally wants to roll to match up with the seam allowance that you stitched. It's another reason why I like to do back stitches at the beginning and end is because I don't want to be pulling those stitches apart when I'm using my fingers to help me line up my gap opening.

You can see I just pulled and it curled right under and now I can put some pins in to hold it. And if you have a fairly large opening like we did, which you could leave a smaller opening. It's just a very long piece of fabric that you're working with and I found it easier to be able to have an opening large enough, to be able to get my whole hand in there to turn it right side out. But you can do the same thing with going from where your pin's at, just kinda pull a little, the fabric will roll under. You can put another pin in and now you can stitch your opening closed.

You can do this with either a hand sewing needle and thread and do a little invisible whip stitch or you can do a top stitch all the way around the outside edge. I like doing a top stitch. I think it also just sort of gives a nice finished look to your project. So you just go all the way around the outside edge with a top stitch that will secure your opening and make sure everything lays nice and flat. And you have a nice completed couch caddy.

Again, you can have one pocket, two pockets, however many you want. You've got your little weight pocket here on the back and you're ready to go. Now, another fun little option that you can add to this is I was sitting at the couch the other morning, drinking a cup of coffee, and I wanted someplace to set it just for a second, but I didn't really have anything. So last time I was at my craft store I found this fun little piece of wood, like 99 cents, just a tiny little piece of wood that, over in the craft wood section, that I thought would be fun to actually take and attach to my couch caddy. So I would probably just use a staple gun, if you could find some upholstery tack nails, lay it on there, tack those on from the back.

And now this is gonna drape over the arm of your sofa. You can put your book, your remote, you have a place to set your cup of coffee there for a second. And it gives it a little bit more stability than just setting it on the arm of your sofa. So just a fun little thing that you can add to it if you can find a little block like this or of course you could just find a square piece of wood anywhere and put it on there. Just something to give you a flat surface.

So a really fun thing to make, really quick and easy. Also fun sort of little gift to give too. Maybe Father's Day or something like that. So definitely quick, easy, fun, and fun little thing that you can add with that piece of wood so I definitely hope you give this one a try.