Organize your shoes in a door-mounted shoe rack to minimize clutter.
Even if you live in a roomy space, space-saving measures are always welcome. From drawer organizers to underbed bins, minimizing clutter keeps things simple. Backs of doors are ideal for storage, so if you've already discovered how handy back-of-bathroom doors can be for stowing towels and robes, you're ready to take the next step: creating a shoe rack that hangs on the back of your closet door so your shoes have a handy home when you're not wearing them. Does this Spark an idea?
Instructions
1. Measure the door on which you plan to hang your shoe rack to assess the length and width of the finished piece. Since you don't have to worry about sewing hems around the backing or the shoe pockets, there's no need to add a few inches to your measurements to do the job.
2. Use a pencil and yardstick to determine and mark the plastic shower curtain's width based on your calculations. Follow the pencil-drawn line using your pinking shears to create decorative edging on one side of the shower curtain. You can leave the other side of the shower curtain alone or pink that as well.
3. Set up your sewing machine. Use a fine needle size 9-11 and nylon or mercerized thread and set up a long stitch length to minimize the number of needle punctures in the plastic material. Next, lighten up the tension and pressure if you can control these settings and then you're ready to sew the shoe rack.
4. Start by sewing a top seam, creating a roomy channel along the top of the curtain section to accommodate the dowel that will support, stabilize and hold taut the shoe storage rack once it's hung. You may wish to use a dowel on the bottom hem too, so create a second hem for that purpose.
5. Cut the remaining shower curtain into 12 x 12-inch squares using your pinking shears to create nice edges around the pocket pieces. If you want to decorate the pockets, now is the time sew on patches, felt flower shapes, or other trim. Once the pockets are decorated, they're ready to be attached, but avoid making punctures in the plastic sleeves by lining them up on the backing using office tape to hold them in place.
6. Stitch two sides and the bottom of each pocket to the shower curtain backing at the same depth so all of your pocket attachment seams are, for example, ½ inch wide. When the pockets are attached, peel off the office tape. Thread a thick dowel through the hem channel at the top.
7. Avoid driving nails into the closet door by mounting over-the-door storage hooks and seating the ends of the dowels into the hooks to keep the unit in place. No more worries about dirty shoes as you can wipe out the pocket interiors if they're soiled and, if you've used a transparent shower curtain for the project, you'll have no problems seeing which pair of black shoes you want to wear on any given day.
Tags: shower curtain, shoe rack, closet door, office tape, pinking shears, pinking shears create, punctures plastic
