DIY 10-minute shoe bags

My mother has a whole slew of germaphobic-based suggestions including:

-Never touch the comforter in a hotel room (hotels rarely wash them between guests).
-Wash all clothing twice using the hottest water possible.
-Lysol is the only acceptable cleaning product for surfaces in your house.
-Towels in the bathroom and kitchen are purely decorative and drying your hands should only be done with fresh paper towels.
-Anti-bacterial soap isn’t an option but rather a necessity.
-Couch pillows are not to be used as actual pillows since their sole purpose is tie in the colors from the rest of the room and using them as pillows will mess up their shape.

I could go on for pages. Some of her advice I take to heart and other bits of it seem like irrational mom/germaphobic suggestions that I simply don’t want/don’t have time to add to my daily routine.

However when she made a set of shoe bags for traveling for me, I was hooked. I hadn’t given much thought to the fact that I was packing my ‘dirty’ shoes in a suitcase with my clean clothes. I hadn’t really thought about the fact that the soles of my shoes had touched the surface of so many streets. As my mom handed me the shoe bags she’d made for me she asked me, “Would you rub your dress or your underwear for that matter on the asphalt of a parking lot?” OF COURSE I WOULDN’T! And… there began my love for shoe bags.

Aside from keeping the items in your suitcase clean and organized, these shoe bags which I made from some of my favorite Michael Miller Fabrics cotton prints are super simple and quick to sew. Plus they’re a great way to use smaller cuts of fabric sitting around your sewing room. I can’t wait to pack up my shoes in my new shoe bags for our Craftcation: Business + Makers Conference in the spring!

For the full tutorial head over here to the Bernina blog We All Sew.