1 Yard Project Session 6: Hanger Buddy

Our next project is perfect to use either in your closet when you're hanging up your clothes or it's really great for travel too. 'Cause it's kind of a way to maybe transport some jewelry or other items you don't wanna have out in the open, sort of concealed. And what I mean by that is it's a little caddy that is going to be be hanging on your hanger. And this could be stand alone, just hanging on a hanger by itself, in your closet, you can put necklaces or bracelets or anything you want in the pockets. You can use the little lace section.

This will hold earrings really easily. You just stick it right through the lace and you have those on there, but then say you have an outfit planned out. You have all your jewelry and everything on there that you need to take with you somewhere. And you're going to have this hanger sort of hanging up in the backseat of your car. You don't necessarily want someone to see all that through the window.

The little caddy is actually down inside once you actually get your sweater on your hanger, can spread your little attachments back out, make sure it's laying nice and flat, and now you have something that's hanging up and you don't see any of the jewelry or anything you might be transporting with it is not visible. So it's good for that as well as to just standalone in your closet. So it's really easy to put together. I'm gonna show you how to do that now. Bring it back out, set our sweater aside.

So there's just a few main components. We have our large rectangle piece is actually one giant pocket. It goes up and down. So maybe if you're gonna put something in there that's a little bit too big to fit down in the pocket, you have all the space up here as well. So we have our zipper in the middle.

We have our fun little lace section. Again, that can be for earrings to hang right off there. And we're going to make a couple little drawstrings to attach. Now if you want it to make a different way to attach it to the hanger you could. If you wanted to wrap it over and put a snap or a button, but I find that the ties are really pretty quick and easy.

You can tie 'em in a bow, a knot. It makes putting it on and off the hanger really pretty nice. So what we're gonna do first is actually work on our main section of our hanger caddy. And what I wanna do is decide where I want my zipper. So I wanted to have a zipper.

I wanted the whole thing to be a pocket, but I still wanted room to have my little earring section up top. So I had decided to have my zipper just a little bit below half. So all I did is took a ruler, laid it on there and I draw a line right across where I have, where I want my zipper to be. Now there will be a downloadable pattern with all the measurements, for all of your, your rectangles, your strips of fabric, everything you need to make this project. So I'm not gonna necessarily say the measurements right now.

I'm just gonna refer to them as my large rectangle piece. But again, those measurements will be in that pattern. So I have my lawn line drawn where I want my zipper to go. And now I wanna somehow put the zipper on there but have it be, you know, edges covered up. I didn't want any raw edges of the zipper anywhere.

So I have sort of a fun, I'm gonna call it a little window technique that I'm gonna use to actually cover up the raw edges of my zipper. So all I need is a strip of fabric. It's the same width as your large rectangle. And what I've done is drawn on a line right down the middle of it. And this is where my little window, I'm going to cut along that line to make the window for my zipper.

But I needed to know how long because I don't wanna cut from here all the way across when I have a much shorter zipper. So this is just a standard nine inch zipper. You could use something bigger or shorter depending on your size of your rectangle, but I have a nine inch zipper. So I have my start and stop cutting marks, about eight inches, because I don't wanna see the ends of the zipper tape anywhere. I want that all to be hidden.

So I need my little window that I cut to be slightly smaller than my actual zipper. So again, I have those lines drawn on there and I'm just going to cut right along that line. So just start cutting, sort of fold it in half and get a little snip and that gives you enough room to actually get your scissors in to start cutting. You could also probably use a rotary cutter on that if you wanted to make it a little bit easier. Just wanna make sure you're cutting right along the line to your start and stop marks.

Got one side done, second side. And now what we're going to be doing is creating our window or you can consider it almost like a little picture frame. We want finished edges to go all the way around the outside of our zipper. So you're gonna do that by folding over the edges of where you just cut. Now, the problem with that is once you get to the edges here, is gonna sort of be a weird slope down.

It's not gonna quite work. So to get around that what I'm gonna do is take and make tiny little cuts at a 45 degree angle, out away from my line. It's gonna leave me with a little triangle piece right here that I'm gonna fold back separately, but still be able to fold back my long edges. Again, I'm gonna do the same thing on this side, but a 45 degree angle away from my line. Just making little snips.

Now I'm folding approximately a quarter of an inch back when I do my fold. So that's about how far I trimmed my little 45 degree angle cuts. Now I'm gonna bring in my pressing mat because the next part is all about pressing. What I'm gonna do is all along where I've cut, again, I'm gonna fold that fabric back about a quarter of an inch, and I'm going to press it. Now you could do more, you could do less.

It depends on how much of the zipper you wanna see. I picked a kind of cool looking zipper. So I wanted to be able to, to see a little bit of it. I didn't want it to be completely hidden or be an invisible zipper. So that's why I chose to make my window area fairly large.

So I'm just going to press this in place. Get some more heat going, and I'm gonna do the same thing on my other long end and with my little triangle pieces, get these guys pressed out as well, go all the way around. All right, got our other long edge. Like so. Oh now we get steam.

Okay. The little triangle's done. Oh, one more this little triangle also needs to be pressed out. We don't wanna forget about him. Okay, so now we have our finished edges that's going to go around our zipper.

So you can see once that lays nice and flat, it's going to be finished. You can even bring in your, your actual zipper, lay it over it to kind of get an idea of what that's gonna look like. It's gonna look pretty cool. So now we are going to be stitching this right to the front of our bag. So these edges are now finished, but we also have these raw edges along the top and the bottom that we need to finish as well.

So we're just going to press those just like we pressed our other edge. Just like so. And go all the way along. Those two raw edges should essentially meet right up with each other, go right along. And you would just press the other one just the same.

But I happen to have one that I've already pressed and pinned. So we'll bring this one in and you can see, I have my window that I've pressed open, my little triangle pieces I've pressed and I have both my long outer, raw edges, pressed in as well. And this is what my finished window zipper is going to look like. So now I need to put this onto my actual front piece. You know, I've already drawn my line so I can center my line in that window.

And I know that's where it is going to go. What I need to do though, is I need to know where to start and stop cutting this one as well. Now I could have just measured the same eight inches that I did when I did my cutting on this little strip. But just in case when I cut those little 45 degree angles and I fold it back my triangles, it may have taken this from eight inches to say, eight and a quarter, or maybe even a little more. So I wanted to wait until I had this one pressed and finished and then I can use that as sort of a little template to lay on there.

And I know now where to start and stop my cutting of this one. So I'm just using little pins to mark where I needed to do my cutting. Like, so. I'm gonna do the same thing. I'm gonna fold this along the line, give it a little snip and I can cut this open, starting and stopping at my pins that I have in place with my little markers.

There. Okay, now, we need to do just a little bit more snipping and cutting and pressing. This is the main part of this project. But once you do all of this pressing, it's going to make putting your zipper on actually really easy and all of your edges and everything are going to be finished. So the same technique we just did where we did our 45 degree angle snips, and you do that on this as well.

Right there and right here. And now we are going to do the same folding. This time though, we're folding this to the wrong side. And if it doesn't quite make sense, why we're doing that you're gonna understand as soon as we lay our zipper in place, it'll all make sense why we're folding it and exposing the wrong side. So I give this a nice press.

Like, so. Get our little triangle pieces like that and over here. Okay and now we're ready to start layering some things together. So now what this did is it made it so the inside of our little caddy is also finished. This isn't lined.

It's just two pieces that are going to be stitched together around the perimeter. So I wanted the inside of where my zipper's at to also be lined, so when I'm putting my hand in and out of my pocket, I'm not snagging on any raw edges. So this is what the inside of our bag now looks like because I folded these edges to the right side. So now that those are folded, I would then layer my zipper on top of that and then I can put my little window, put my window right on top of there, and then I'm gonna do some stitching. So what I wanna do is make sure that for one, I have my zipper centered over my opening on the back and I can put a pin to hold that in place first.

Just one ought to do it. Maybe one on either side, 'cause we'll actually pin this in place with more pins. Once we get our other top layer on Okay, I'm going to go ahead and open the zipper slightly. And the reason I'm doing that is because zippers on the ends, they automatically go up and down a little bit and I want to be able to actually pull those ends together like that and make my zipper tape lay flat, as opposed to sort of splitting apart like that. So you can fix that by just opening it up a little bit, bring those ends together.

Go ahead and put a pin right in place like that. Hold that down. Oops. Okay, get rid of my pressing mat because I don't need him anymore right now. And we are going to put some more pins in place.

So what needs to happen now is that our little window that we made needs to be centered over the zipper and we can pin this in place. So you can see it was a lot of folding and pressing. But now all we have to do is stack the three pieces on top of each other and it's actually pretty easy to stitch. We have, the strips of fabric are on the sides are far enough away from the zipper teeth that we don't even need a zipper foot for this project. I just use my regular presser foot and I'll show you how I did that, in just a second.

Just wanna get all of this pinned in place. I'm sort of adjusting. So I have even amounts of that white zipper tape showing both sides and I just move my way down, putting in pins. Now, since you have, you know, a back layer, we have zipper tape, we have top layer, we have both sides of the top layer pressed under, that's a lot that can be moving around while you're trying to stitch. So I would recommend putting in more pins than you may even think you need, like to make sure my zipper pull is on top.

I don't want it hidden underneath this fabric. Maybe getting accidentally stitched on or caught in anything. Put a few more pins in. I can take it over and start stitching. More on bottom.

Okay, oh that one's a bent pin. Here we go. Now, what I'm gonna do first is I'm going to stitch along the edge of my zipper, 'cause I wanna make sure that my zipper's in place first and then I can worry about the long edges of my my sort of window frame I have here. So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna start just on one of the sides of the zipper and all I did was put this up here. I have the side of my presser foot lined up with the edge of my zipper.

I'm going to move my needle position all the way over to the left, as far as it'll go and this is going to end up making it so I'm stitching fairly close to that folded edge of the fabric, but again, I'm not having to use a zipper foot or anything special just because I am able to use my regular presser foot and line it up along the edge of the zipper. Make sure everything stays nice and lined up. Take your pins out as you get to them. And you're gonna stitch right along the edge. Again, we're keeping our presser foot just lined up right along the zipper.

I'm gonna go a little further. Once I get to my zipper pull, obviously, it's making my zipper tape sort of bow a little bit. So I'm going to leave my needle down, raise my presser foot, open my zipper just a little bit to get past my presser foot and then I can continue on with my sewing. Taking out your pins. All right and now we're getting to the end of our zipper.

But we're getting to the end of the zipper that you can still see. Remember we hid a little bit of both the beginning and end of the zipper underneath our window and you can't see it, but you can feel it. So make sure you've gone past where that zipper tape is and then where the actual zipper teeth are. Excuse me, pass that, make sure you're only sewing through fabric. If you're in any way, worried that you might not be all the way past those teeth and you are afraid you're gonna hit 'em with your needle, it's a very small little section.

You can just do this part by hand. I'm just simply turning my hand wheel by myself, towards me, moving the needle, going nice and slow right along the edge. That way, if I did accidentally hit one of those teeth I'd be able to feel that the needle is not going to go. And I have no risk of breaking a needle doing it that way. So a fun, little trick you can use to make sure you're all the way past those zipper teeth.

Make sure you're all the way to where when you pivot back, you're lined up to start down the next long edge. There we go. Didn't quite go far enough the first time. Now I can lower my presser foot and continue back to stitching like normal. Again, taking our pins out as we go.

Getting close to my zipper pull. So I want to raise my foot, sit my zipper back, which sometimes you have to actually raise your foot even higher to get it past that zipper pull. And then you can finish going around your zipper. Okay, take out my other pin. Okay, and I'm gonna do the same thing.

I'm gonna get really close to the edge, go where I'm pretty sure I'm past it go ahead and pivot. But if I'm at all worried, I'm gonna use my hand wheel and I'm going to walk it past that zipper end there. Couple more. Okay and now I can go back and just overlap where I started and I know that my stitching is secure. Okay so it was really tricky as far as trimming and clipping and pressing, but once you actually go to stitch it down, you're really just doing straight stitching all the way around the perimeter of a zipper.

You can take this, any extra pins out, well before we're all done, press that flat, but you can see now we have a nice little pocket, goes to the wrong side and we have finished edges on the top and the bottom. So give you would give that a press, and then go ahead and edge stitch your top edges down too. 'Cause you don't wanna see anything that's underneath there, but bring my finished piece back in. You can see how we have our stitching all the way around the zipper and on the top and the bottom, completely securing that in place. So then if that wasn't fun enough, you get to do it again to make your little window frame for your earring section.

And all I've done is again, I cut a, I cut a square and then I cut the middle out of the square, did my same technique, where I made those little snips in the corners and pressed everything to the wrong side, both on the inside and on the outside, making this a finished sort of little picture frame. And then I needed something to actually be able to put my earrings on to hang. So you could use a mesh. You could use any sort of netting. I just happened to have some lace leftover from another project, so I just used it.

Now I was a little worried that one, just one piece of this may not be enough. So I cut one that's twice as big and just folded it in half, like so, put it under my window. And if you were at all off in your cutting, you can trim your lace so it fits perfectly under your window and then you would take and position it wherever you wanted on your bag. Me, I wanted mine right up here, so I layered it, put it on there and did the same edge stitching all the way around the outside and inside edge, just like I did the zipper. If you decide you want that down here, you can also put it down there as well.

That part is up to you, but just make your same little window, get that guy stitched in place and then you're ready to do your attachment method to actually hang this on your hanger. And we we did this by making easy little drawstrings that you can simply tie around your hanger and these are just strips of fabric. So as you can see, I have just a strip of fabric, one inch and all I did was fold it in half and I'm gonna stitch it and turn it right side out. Now that is kind of tricky when you have something that's this thin. Now they do make tube turning tools.

You can use a safety pin. There's all sorts of different methods for making a little tube and being able to turn it right side out. Sometimes I find that I just, I have a hard time with those. So I wanted a way to still make my drawstring, still have finished edges but I wanted to not have to turn it right side out. So if you wanna try this method, you can do this as well.

What I did, get my pressing mat, is I am going to take and fold both of my raw ends to approximately the center. You can do 'em one at a time. You can do them at the same time, but I just want them to either line right up next to each other. Or I want them to overlap slightly. I'm just going to press this all the way down.

Move it down as I go. Again, overlap or right next to each other, either one. Almost done. And then what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna take this over to my machine and I'm actually going to zigzag stitch right along my raw edges. So let me press this last little bit.

Okay and this is just kind of temporarily holding it in place for me. So I don't have to be arranging as I'm stitching but take this over to my machine, I'm gonna set it for a zigzag stitch and I'm going to zigzag right over the top of my two raw edges all the way down. All right, like so and just come right off the edge. Raise my presser foot. And now I have a little draw string.

I use, just happened to have red thread in my bobbin. If you had matching thread, or one that sort of blended into your fabric, like this one here. You can see, you don't even really notice that line of zigzag stitching down the edge, but you see how much faster and easier it was to create that, then to have to worry about turning it inside out or right-side out once you stitch it. So then to finish the edges, all I would do is double fold twice, take it over the machine and stitch and I would get a finished edge just like this one. So really quick and easy way to make a draw string and again, you'll make two of these and you're going to use these to attach your hanger buddy to your hanger.

So to do that, we would have our finished front piece with your zipper. This would be stitched down and you would have your earing hanger wherever you decided you want it. You're going to take your draw strings and you're going to fold them in half and you're gonna put them close to the edges. Now I'll measure in just a sec to make sure that we actually getting them equal. I just wanna get them in place and we're gonna put them three inches in from the edge.

So I have the edge of my fabric here. Oh, that was almost perfect and I had the edge of my dress string right there at about three inches in and I'm going to pin this in place, right, like so. Do the same thing on this side. Bring it over three inches in, like this and all I would have to do is sandwich my two pieces together and I'm gonna stitch around the perimeter and those drawstrings are gonna get caught in the edge while I'm stitching and then when we turn it right side out, you're able to actually have your drawstring. So since we've already done that in a couple of projects here in this class, and you're pretty familiar with how to put right sides together and stitch around the perimeter of something, you do the same thing with this.

Maybe put some pins in there if you need help, remembering where to start and stop your stitching. Leave your opening for turning, stitch all the way around the outside edge and when you are done, you're gonna turn it right side out and you're gonna have this finished project, right like this. And again, you could take and find your wherever your opening was to turn it. You're gonna fold that under a secure the edge. You can do a top stitch.

I did do a little invisible whip stitch along the bottom edge here. So you can't even see where the opening was to turn it. And you have your finished little hanger buddy that you can use by itself in the closet to store jewelry or anything that you want or use this the next time you have to bring an outfit somewhere or bring a shirt and you wanna sort of hide something underneath there, jewelry, money, makeup, whatever it is. It will be safe in your little hanger buddy. So great project and I think you'll really find it useful in your closet.