Thursday, September 6, 2012

Door Stop





We live in a wind tunnel. If the living room balcony doors and the front door are open, we get the most glorious breezes. Occasionally, however, the breezes turn into gale force winds slamming bedroom doors shut with great strength and a subsequent noise that makes you jump. Sometimes the forces are so strong they throw open the bathroom door, literally bending the hinges. While this is not the best photo, you can see that the hinge is no longer straight.




In order to keep K's bedroom door from slamming shut (slamming doors and fingers don't mix, just ask my mother about my thumb), we took a pillow from the sofa and placed it near the door frame.




The poor pillow was demoted from it's once respectable spot on the sofa to the floor in K's room. That's sad. Something had to be done.

The pillow was doing it's job quite nicely, but I thought something with a bit more weight would be nice so we could keep it open a bit wider if we wanted.

I had leftover Thomas material from a different project (I'll blog about it later), so given K's love for Thomas, I used that. The print is fairly large, however, so I wanted the door stop to be a bit big.

I started by cutting two tall trapezoids for the sides, two rectangles for the front and back, two long, thin rectangles for a strap, and two smaller rectangles for the top and bottom. To provide a bit more traction, I also cut a rectangle of plastic grip used in drawers and on shelves.




The assembly was super easy! Sew the front, back and sides into a tube, leaving a little space about 2/3 of the way up to flip the door stop right side out at the end.




Then sew the strap together and flip so it's right side out.




Sandwich the folded strap between a side trapezoid and the top and sew completely around the top square.




I figured the plastic grip would slide around while trying to sew it to the bottom, so I basted it to my bottom rectangle first and then sewed it to the bottom of the tube.




Then just flip, fill, and sew up your little hole. I filled mine with soy beans at the bottom and then regular stuffing at the top. I think it looks adorable and worked well all day today. I don't think K even noticed it, but luckily Y did, so it's all good.

Most importantly, the demoted pillow is back to it's standard position on the sofa.




- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

2 comments:

  1. It amuses me how differently you and I attack a problem. Your elaborate solution is detailed nicely in the blog post above.

    My solution can be summed up in one URL:
    https://www.google.com/search?q=buy+doorstop

    But this is why your home is adorable and mine, were it not for Michelle, would be all function and no form.

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    Replies
    1. That cracked me up! I did buy a door stop last year, but for some inexplicable reason, there is a good amount of space between the bottom if the door and the floor. A standard door stop didn't do the trick.

      Seriously, though, from picking out fabrics to sewing up the little hole, this took me under an hour and cost me nothing, since I already had everything I needed. If I were to buy one, surely it would take longer than an hour to search shops to find one and cost me more, even if I bought it over the Internet.

      The added bonus is that it's cute ;)

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