And the Awesome-ness continues...

I have been trying to figure out what to do about the books that are perpetually strewn about the floor of our mini-van for as long as I can remember, but I never got any farther than screeching, "There has got to be something out there that can hold books in the car!" each time that I would finally pick them up after I got tired of the kids stepping on them on the way out of the door.

I was prepared to spend some serious bucks to give my car a feeling other than "untidy library", but before I got that far, thankfully, I found instructions on some gal's blog  (http://lovelypraiseworthy.blogspot.com/2010/02/tutorial-car-seat-book-holder.html) on how to make your own book holder with multiple pockets, etc.  You can check out the real version if mine doesn't make any sense to you.

Anyway, I am not a sewing person, per se...like, following a pattern, but I'm pretty good at figuring out how to fix something that I have into something else (ie, halloween costumes).  Also, I can pretty much only sew straight seams, so I thought this was something I could handle.

It didn't just take me 1/2 an hour of free time, like she suggests, but it was fairly easy, and took part of the afternoon.  And it works, which was the point of the whole thing.  I also didn't just happen to have an extra pieced quilt and batting lying around (what kind of supermom is this chick anyway?) so I used 4 old placemats that I'd had forever, but never used because there were only 4 of them, and we need 6 of everything. 

I sewed two of the placemats together to make the back, and then folded up the bottom edge to make the bottom pocket.  I then used the other two placemats to make the top pockets.  I basically sewed one horizontal edge of each placemat to the back, folded it up, pinned it in place, and then sewed the whole thing (using a very close zig-zag stitch) on each side (vertical edges) from top to bottom.  I sewed some extra grosgrain ribbon that I had in my sewing supplies to each corner, and I was good to go.

Sorry if that doesn't make sense, but like I said, I don't really sew.  Of course, the upshot of that is that if I can figure this out, you can totally figure this out!! 

So here it is, installed in the car, holding books and everything.  And it seems to be working well.  I have to remind the kids to pick the books up (what else is new?), but they actually do it, and, so far, there's no using books as stepping stones.  So...yay!