Bedside Book Caddy

Motivation comes and goes in fits and spurts.  When I have time to work on something, I can't seem to get into it.  But then I suddenly develop interest in it when I really need to be working on something else (like job hunting).  

Ugh. 

My OMG is sprawled across my design wall and what do I do?  Dig through my fabric drawer to make a bedside book caddy.  At least it forced me to clean up the sewing room to find enough table space to cut fabric.

My nightstand has always been a place to put books, lamp, hair ties, and a few other odds and ends.  Since March it has also taken on my smartphone and meds (plus a water bottle that was banished to the floor).  Last week as I blindly dumped several items on the floor, I thought it would be nice to have a pocket on the side of the nightstand.  A bit of googling later and I discovered a pocket that could hang off the bed.  Ooh.  I could make that.  Down the rabbit hole I went.

 

There are so many designs and tutorials out there.  I wanted something for a book (or maybe two or three?) and my water bottle.  As I debated about what fabric I wanted to use, I spied an embroidered panel that someone donated to me years ago.  It's pretty, but I could never figure out how to use it.  Aha!  That was the right size for a big pocket.  I found some green fabric that matched, then pulled a fat quarter of purple flowers, roughly the same green and purple as the embroidery.  I loved this fabric when I bought it, but it never went with anything, until now.

So I shoved my OMG setting triangles to the side of my sewing table and got to work. 

 

I based the design mostly on My Poppet's tutorial.  I also really liked using the non-slip shelf liner from SewCanShe.  I had a bunch of that in my closet.  From there, I winged it.  The main pocket was straightforward enough, but I had to work out how to make the water bottle pouch.

I ran into several issues, including having cut the fabric to size before quilting it.  Rookie move.  I also didn't account for the bed rail causing the finished caddy to stick out a bit more.  That required adding a strip of matching fabric to the top so the shelf liner didn't show.  But once I got it under the mattress, it stays in place, even with two heavy books and a full bottle of water.

Not bad for a seat-of-my-pants project.  I love that I finally incorporated that piece of embroidery.  I'll use the caddy for a while before I decide if I need to rip parts of it apart and rework it.  Although I like the idea of the slide-behind pouch from My Poppet's design, it's not easy to slide a book in there if the pockets are full.  But... if I made the back of the organizer longer than the front piece, that might have worked.  A pleated pocket, as in the SewCanShe design, would have been good, too.  Definitely needed to take the bed railing into account as well. 

In the meantime... I'm now thinking I could use a pocket off the back of my loveseat to store the stuff that I constantly knock off my ironing board.  I could go a little caddy crazy.  LOL.

Sharing with Confessions of a Fabric Addict - Can I Get a Whoop Whoop?