Ellie's Car Kit

This weekend we are going to celebrate the birthdays of six different family members on Corey's side of the family.  September is the birthday month for not only Corey, but also for his grandma, his mom, his dad, his uncle, and his cousin, Ellie.  Corey, his mom, and his uncle all share the exact same date as a matter of fact.

For Ellie's seventeenth birthday, we wanted to make a car-themed gift since she is now the proud new owner of a super cute Jeep Liberty.  Corey and I put our heads together and came up with this collection for her, which I am calling "Ellie's Car Kit" for lack of better inspiration.

The trash bag is designed to hang on the gear shift.  If she prefers, she could hang it on the head rest instead.  It's lined with ripstop vinyl, but I'm still going to warn her not to put anything full of liquid in there.  Theoretically the bag should be washable, but who knows how it would survive the wash.  The tutorial calls for putting a cylinder of Peltx inside to serve as a support for a trash bag liner, but I doubt a seventeen-year-old would really use one.  The purple fabric is just quilter's cotton that I found in the remnant bin at Jo-Ann's earlier this summer.  [This is actually the second time I have made this car trash bag pattern, but I gave away the first one before we had this blog to document our projects.]

I have blogged about this cool Wide-Open Zipper Pouch before.  It was still sitting in my sewing room as I was picking fabric for the kit, and it suddenly hit me that it would be perfect for holding some first aid supplies for the new driver!  Actually, Corey insisted that Ellie needed first aid supplies for her car.  I rolled my eyes and told him he was an idiot, but I went ahead and bought a basic kit anyway.  It was only after I made the happy discovery that this pouch would fit the supplies perfectly that I warmed up to the idea.

The supplies came pre-packaged in some plastic, and it all fit nicely inside the pouch.  I hope Ellie doesn't ever need anything out of it except for a band-aid or two.

Just for fun, I put a little silver bell on a jump ring and attached it to the zipper pull.

Corey had a great idea for me to make a clear vinyl window pouch to hold the car's registration and insurance cards.  Actually, he really wants me to make one for him, but I haven't quite gotten around to it yet.  This Peek-a-Boo Pencil Pouch is a great size to store all of the vital info Ellie will need to carry in her glove compartment.  It's hard to see in this picture, but I put the same silver bell as above on this zipper pull as well.

We figured Ellie might need to carry a pack of tissues with her, especially since winter is coming up soon.  Where she lives in northern Michigan, winter usually skips right over fall.  Finally, I just whipped up a little keychain (and it really is little -- I didn't have a long enough piece to make it fit over a wrist, but with the little clip on it she can just hook it onto something else instead) not based on any pattern in particular.   The black part wrapped around the strap is a little bit of grosgrain ribbon I had on hand.

Fun fact -- the denim in the tissue pack is a scrap from Connie's old dog bed that I had made years ago when we lived in Tennessee.  The pillow insert disintegrated and I never bought another one.  The dog bed case got shoved in the linen closet and when I found it during the move to Michigan I stuck it in the scrap fabric bin.  The black is more of the ripstop vinyl, and the green (which is also in the clear vinyl pouch above) is left over from making Erin's purse.

Happy birthday to Ellie (and the rest of Corey's family!).