Sewing Rewind: Travel edition!

It's sewing rewind time again!  A week goes by so fast, doesn't it?  Anyways, coincidentally when I was making out a schedule of the projects I wanted to share, it didn't even occur to me that this post would be so fitting due to recent travels!

Right now, I am in New York and headed to Nashville tomorrow.  Tons of traveling, and today's featured projects are getting a some use right now!


In this post (jump to):

• Packing Cubes
• Cord Tamers
• Jewelry Roll

Cord Tamers, Packing Cubes & Jewelry Roll

Packing Cubes

Last year I had a few weekend trips when I decided that I wanted to make something that would make it easy to organize my suitcase quickly.

Previously, I had been using large Ziplock bags for items such as toiletries, underwear, and makeup.  For my shoes, I was using some drawstring bags that my grandmother made and are still in perfect condition.  And for my clothes, I was using the vinyl bags that bedsheets are packaged in.

• Pros: Everything was in clear bags and therefore easy to find!  Many bags with different categories made it easy to pick out exactly what I wanted (PJs in one bag, workout gear in another).
• Cons: Plastic bags have no structure and fell over easily, with smaller bags of makeup, etc. falling to the bottom of the bag and becoming hidden and hard to find.  The bedsheet bags for my clothes were flat and therefore difficult to access the items at the bottom of the bag.

So I put together a wishlist of what I wanted:

1. Clear
2. Easy to access
3. Semi-structured (to avoid smaller items falling to the bottom)
4. Different sizes
5. Inexpensive!

After finding out what worked and what didn't, I scoured the web to find a solution.  Nothing struck my fancy, until I spotted the packing cubes:

They seemed great for organizing, provided easy access to contents, sturdy, and came in different sizes.  However, they weren't clear, didn't have a small size, were super expensive!

So what's a girl to do?  Make her own!  I tend to do that...

Here's a view of the lower part of my suitcase with clothing, workout clothes, PJs, undies, and an extra for other clothing.

And here's the upper part of my suitcase with shoes in drawstring bags made by my grandmother (see better pictures here!), as well as toiletries, accessories, jewelry, charging cords, and a bathing suit + cover up.

Initially, I toyed with the idea of labeling each cube, but I actually prefer to see my items instead of reading labels.  Here are a couple of them close-up with my zip-around top for easy access to absolutely everything!

Stinky workout clothes stay separate from the rest.

And it's super easy to pack.  I just fill the appropriately sized cube with all of the items that fit that category!

Cord Tamers

To go along with my power charging cords, I made a ton of these cord tamers.  They are super, super easy and I made about 30 of them in a couple of sizes for everything from my phone charger to my Silhouette cord to my iron!

And yes, this is more of the curtain fabric I received for free and used in previous projects here and here.  Waste not, want not!

Jewelry Roll

And here is my final project!  I made a jewelry roll to go along with my vinyl packing cubes, and I love it!  It fits inside the cubes, and I can pack my jewelry without having to spend tons of time untangling them from each other at my final destination.

Starting to unroll the roll...

Fully unrolled!

And filled with some of my favorite things!

These are definitely some of my most used items.  I think they are pretty nice-looking too, even though I toyed with the idea of using a cuter materials.  Maybe next time, but hopefully you get inspiration to make your own travel accessories suited for your own needs!

FYI, if anyone needs a tutorial on how to make my packing cubes (because there don't seem to be any around), I'm up for doing so.  Let me know in the comments below!

Has anyone worked with as much vinyl as I have?  If so, let me know if you love it as much as I do!