Trash on the go - Part Deaux | This WONDERfilled Life

Trash on the go - Part DEAUX

from sad to functional

I've been out of sorts this spring and I can't quite put my finger on why.  If I had to guess I think I may have spread myself to thin again...and now that summer is officially here (P graduated preschool last Friday) I am anxious to get back into a better daily routine.  That routine of course involves playing my horn and making all the things.  Funny thing is that I have actually made several things in the past weeks but was too busy to write about them, but I am determined to update my blog and it starts today...remember Week 21 in last year's #52wonderfilledweeks challenge?? It was a custom trash can for our car in preparation for our first, long, family road trip.  It was great until the kids kept kicking it and throwing things on top of it rather than in it, and eventually it crumpled over and collapsed.  Everyday this past school year I'd look at it and just grumble under my breath, 'add that to my list of things to fix'. Well, with a ten day road trip out west ahead of us, I sat down one night when everyone went to bed early and fixed the failing car receptacle and am happy to report it's now PERFECT!!

The first step was to remove it from the car and empty it...which needed to be done anyways ha!! I also removed the "stablizing" square from the bottom of the bag (keep it though you'll need to put that back in in the end). I turned the whole thing inside out and wiped it down.  It is a trash can after all, and my sewing space is somewhat sacred to me, even if it is in our basement!

If you haven't made a simple boxed bag before you basically sew together two pieces of fabric right sides together and then sew a seam perpendicular (across) your side seams.  This creates the "boxed" bottom to the bag.  You can cut off the remaining triangle of fabric when sewing bags like this or in this case I left it so it would hopefully make the bag sturdier.  You can see from the picture above that I have a square bottom to my trash can.  I knew I would need something to keep the can open so there is a channel with boning in the top of the bag around the entire opening.  The fabric I used is waterproof oxford, a pretty stable/sturdy fabric, but I should have known better when drafting this, that with the abuse of two kiddos it would never stay standing on it's own but with the boning around the top it sure did stay open...so...I decided to add four channels for additional boning running at each corner from the bottom up to the top channel. 

I didn't take any pictures of the channels that I made, but I basically cut strips of oxford at 1.5" by the length plus a few inches of my bag.  I wanted to keep the inside of the bag consistent so I folded the right side in on both long sides about a half inch.  I felt it could be dicey ironing the oxford so I carefully pressed the folded channels with a press cloth (fancy term for cloth you don't mind messing up while also saving your iron from catastrophe) and then clipped the snot out of them to hold them while I figured out where and how to install them!

Knowing where to put the channel in at the bottom of the bag was easy since there was a defined corner there but at the top, eeesh, it's kind of a guessing game...so I grabbed my ruler and measured the bottom of the bag, from the SEAM (note, not the fold but the actual line of stitching) to the corner.  In my case that was four inches.  Then I went to the top of the bag where there is no defined corner and measured out four inches from the same line of stitches (the side seam).  I marked both places and placed my prepared channel in place against the two marks (one and the top and one at the bottom). 

I wanted to make the channels so that the boning would go in and up thru the bottom.  If the bag started to collapse again then the top of the channel would stop the boning from coming out.  If I had made them go down thru the top I ran the risk of the boning slipping out and the can sadly slumping over again.  I used pins to pin each channel in place and started at the bottom of the bag and sewed up one side.  About an inch and half from the top boning channel I stopped to fold under the excess fabric, this created a cleaner finished look (IMO, especially since the tops might be more visible during its everyday use) and then I continued back down the other side, leaving the bottom open for the boning to be inserted.  

I removed the boning from the fabric covering but left the thread wrap on it so it would have a little thickness and pseudo tackiness to the channel. 

I stuck the boning up into each channel and cut them slightly longer (like 1/8" extra) so they would fill out the entire channel top to bottom.  

I snipped the excess channels back to the same over hang length, about an inch, and replaced the stabilizer square back in the bottom of the bag.

VIOLA! Our car can now stands up and with stands the rigorous of two kids and the life of a freelance musician.

You can see where the top of the vertical channels meet the top/opening boning channel.

I'm happy to report that after ten, TEN days on the road the can is still standing! And since it no longer slumps it holds more trash! YAY!! Now I just need to find the time to make a PUL trash bag and we can eliminate the need for plastic grocery bags!