fat quarter friday {closet clothes divider tutorial}

I'm still on my organizing frenzy. This week I am working on the kids room. We have very limited space for all of their clothes as we only have one armoire and one dresser that they all share. I needed a way to keep all of their clothes separated by child. Their clothes used to be all together and so unorganized, which caused complete madness! I wanted something that could be reusable and quick to make. I also wanted to use up all of those plastic bags that I had in the closet. I had been wondering for awhile now if I could cut up sew those plastic blags, so I decided to give it a shot and well, it works great. The best part about the dividers is that when you want to change seasons or the child's size, all you have to do is reprint and insert it into the little pocket. So I hope these cute little clothes dividers help you in your organizing frenzies, they sure are helping me!

Closet Clothes Dividers Tutorial

Materials Needed:

* one fat quarter (which will make two dividers)

*plastic bags (the ones you get when you buy sheet sets)
*kid sized coat hangers

*card stock for templets

Start by cutting up the plastic bags. Cut off the zipper and cut up all the seams so that they lie flat.

Change your foot to the teflon foot if you have one. If not, grab a plastic foot, hopefully you have one of those. It just makes sewing over the plastic much easier.

Tape two pieces of card stock together and make the following shape. The templet is 13 1/4" long and 8" to the highest point and then 5 1/2" on the sides. If you are not using kids coat hangers measure like so.

Measure about 2 1/2" all around the coat hanger except leave about 3/4" on the sides of coat hanger to the edge of the paper.

Cut a 4" square out of card stock.

Take your 4" square templet and cut out one piece of plastic. It is easiest if you use your rotary cutter to cut out the pieces. If your pieces of plastic are wrinkled you can iron them by sandwiching them in between some pieces of fabric. I did it and it worked great, but don't hold me liable for any mess-ups.

Now cut out two pieces of fabric using the coat hanger templet.

Fold the top tip on the piece of fabric down a 1/2" and iron. Fold over again another 1/2" and iron. You are doing this to conceal the raw edges. Now stitch. Repeat with the other piece of fabric.

Now it is time to sew the plastic square onto one piece of fabric. Find the center of the fabric and measure up 2" from the bottom. That is where your piece of plastic should be sewn on. Make sure the plastic piece is centered and place a little piece of masking tape on top of the plastic piece to hold it in place. It will making sewing it on easier.

Sew all three sides of the plastic piece. Make sure you do not sew the top of the plastic.

Should look like this now. This was the best shot I could get. It was really hard to photograph the plastic piece.

Pin both pieces of fabric together, right sides facing. Sew sides. Make sure you do not sew the top or bottom.

Zig-zag or searge raw edges.

Fold over raw edges on the bottom of fabric by folding up 1/2" and ironing. Fold over another 1/2" and iron again. Sew bottom edge.

Turn right sides out and iron flat. Just be careful not to iron the plastic piece.

Insert coat hanger in from the bottom.

Print or hand write your child's name, size, season or whatever else you want to help you stay organized. As you can see from my initials I'm not so creative when it comes to using print shop. I had envisioned their initials in the middle with some polka dots around the initial but as you can see, all they got was a plain ole initial. That's alright, I still love the way they look and the best part is the armoire is now completely organized! I will be making some more to put into the larger closet and separating the kids clothes by season and size.

**Please feel free to use this tutorial for your personal sewing projects. You may link this to your blog and use any photo's. Please be kind and give credit where credit is due.**

Any questions or comments please do not hesitate to contact me. If you make one using this tutorial, please add it to my flickr group. I would love to see it and just may see it featured one day!