Trays

My father is notoriously hard to buy for.  He always says he doesn't need anything.  This makes Christmas challenging.  Even more so, his birthday is the 8th of December. ( My sister's is the 6th.  Mother's -  the 10th of January.  Nephew - the 5th of January.  Crazy family and their winter birthdays....)  I have a hard time coming up with ideas for things he'd actually like and use. I have to admit, though, the potato pellet gun was a hoot.  The victims rest of the family still haven't forgiven me for that one.

Father travels a lot.  So I made him these trays.

They hold your change, your keycard, your wallet, your phone, etc., on the hotel dresser so you don't lose anything.  And since they have snaps, they collapse to pack flat in your suitcase.

I bookmarked a tutorial on similar trays, planning to read it later when I had time, and then couldn't find it when I went to make them.  So I made it up as I went along.  I added some batting so that they were softer in the bottom so if he dumped his phone in there, it would be somewhat protected.  I also chose flannel to line them so they wouldn't scratch anything.

To position the batting so it wouldn't shift, I cut it to finished size of the bottom and drew lines in the centre of some fusible interfacing cut to the size of my finished tray plus 1/4" seam allowance.  I centred the batting in the squares I drew on the interfacing and fused it to the flannel.  Then I cut around the interfacing to get my inside pieces and cut same size pieces from my quilting cotton for the outsides.

Forgive the bad lighting.  I can only sew late at night right now...

He loves them.  He has one in Toronto right now.  He may also have gone to Leafs game last night. I'm terribly jealous.  :-)

I also have some incredible thank-yous to give out for something cool that happened at Soaps last Friday night but I'm hoping to get a copy of a picture first...  Stay tuned.