Car Floor Mat Towel Sleeves

April 1, 2019September 1, 2019 / Yen-Van Tran / 3 Comments

04.01.2019

0600

Materials:

2 Bath Towels
4 Hand Towels
Sewing Kit
White Fabric Pencil

Tools:

Sewing Kit
Sewing Machine

It’s interesting how we pick up habits from our parents or other figures in our lives. When the rain season comes, my mother has always wrapped an old towel across her car mats to absorb the extra water that would get dragged in by everyday use. To this day, I’ll see her break out the towels around the middle of October.

As for me, I never cared for my floor mats in my car. I honestly never liked my car. The car was bought without my input and I was stuck with it thereafter. But recently I did get new car mats, along with a new car, and since I didn’t want to drag a bunch of water into my car, I too, wrapped my car mats in towels. But I soon realized that the towels would get tugged and moved around from the daily use of them. I had to solve this issue. I didn’t want to constantly re-tuck the towels under my car mats, because sometimes they were already dirty and wet.

The front floor mats were a large size and I knew that bath towels would be a perfect fit. I decided to make some towel sleeves for my car mats. Since my carpet in my car is black, I knew I had to find black towels to create my towel sleeves. With the towels sleeves, it would be easier to catch the dirt and rocks that would be brought into my car, and the towels would be easy to clean, since all I had to do was take off the sleeves and throw them into the washing machine.

I found two bath towels that were 52″ long by 30″ wide. Since my front floor mats are about 31″ long and 21″ wide, I only needed the width of the floor mat sleeves to be about 22″ wide. the size of these bath towels would give me 26″ width. I didn’t mind if the towel wasn’t long enough to cover the length of my floor mat because the mat could stick out a little bit.

I folded the towel in half, length-wise and pinned the edges together, to prepare for the sewing process.

I wanted to leave one of the shorter edges open, so I could slide my floor mats in and out easily. In one continuous line, I sewed along the yellow arrows (in the picture below). For the corners of the towel, where the material was thicker, I angled the long sew line and continued on. I then went back and hand stitched the corners, so they would stay together better.

As you can see, the folded towel was still large enough to fit over my floor mat, and there was still extra room.

In order for the sleeves to fit to the car mats better, I sewed rough outlines of the shape of each mat on each of the sleeves. First, I flipped the car mats over, onto the back of the car sleeve. Then, using my white fabric pencil, I drew rough outlines of each mat. I did this because I didn’t want the white washable pencil to show, when I fit the sleeve over the car mat.

I only outlined the rough outline of the car mats, because I still needed to remove them easily. I created the outlines about 3/4″ from the actual edge of the car mats. I left a bit of a boarder, for the fact that the towel might shrink in the washing machine and also, I wanted the sleeves to slip off easily, when needed. Towards the closed end of the car sleeve, I tightened the outline a bit, but in general, I kept the outline lines straight in from the open edge.

I placed each of the front floor mats into my car, and folded the edges underneath the floor mats accordingly. You don’t have to fold them under, but I chose to.

For the rear seat floor mats, I found eight hand towels to create the set in my car. My rear seat floor mats are 24″ long, by 16″ wide, so I found hand towels that were 26″ long and 16″ wide. The sewing process for these floor mat sleeves follows the previous steps for the front seat floor mat sleeves.

I stacked two hand towels on top of each other, making sure that the tag was facing inwards for both towels. I then sewed along the yellow arrows around the towels. I left one of the long edges open because I wanted to slide the floor mat in easily. For the corners of the hand towel sleeves, I angled the long, linear sew line to complete the stitch, and then I went back to each corner and stitched them together carefully. My machine doesn’t like it when the material gets too thick, because it can’t pass under the needle easily.

These rear seat floor mats had a lot of extra room around the edges, so I knew that I might have extra floor coverage.

This size hand towel seems to accommodate different car brands and the mats still fit really well within the parameters.

Now, when I need to clean my floors, I’ll just remove the floor mats from the towel sleeves and either wash them or shake them out. I might have to vacuum the edges, but that doesn’t take long at all. These towel sleeves makes my life a bit easier, by allowing me to keep my floor mats clean, and that’s always a good perk.

Car Hacks

May 30, 2016March 30, 2019 / Yen-Van Tran / 1 Comment

05.30.2016

0850

Materials:

Shoelace
Carabiners
S-Hooks
Metal rings
Velcro straps

As someone who frequently uses a purse, I find it very annoying that there never seems to be a place in my car to hang it. When I used to own a smaller purse, I was able to place it on my console area because it was small enough to sit there. Since I’ve upgraded to my shoulderbag, and needed to hang it up so that the contents inside stay organized, I still didn’t have a place in my car to hang it. Although cars do come with a multitude of amenities, sometimes when you have an older car, like mine, you have to design it yourself.

For my shoulder bag hanger, I use shoelaces, an S-Hook, a carabiner and rings to reach the rings attached to my bag. There are rings were left over from my purse hack and I would hook those rings to the S-Hook for quick access.

I looped the shoelace extension to one of the poles of the passenger headrest. I wanted a soft material in the beginning of this line, in case the passenger needed to lower the headrest to its lowest point. An S-Hook was then attached to the shoelace at the end, which could be height adjusted by moving the S-Hook to different knots on the shoelace line. Because I knew my bag needed different types of height extensions depending on what I carried in my bag for each day, I wanted to make a few knots in the shoelace so I could choose the tension that would be needed. This way, my bag rings would be taught while hanging, but not floating off of the center console. The carabiner is there in case I have items that really needed a secure anchor, the S-Hook is used for items that will only need temporary security when in motion.

My second car hack is my phone holder. It’s a simple rectangular case that came with my external hard drive. But since I keep my external hard drive in another case, I didn’t think it was necessary. So I repurposed it as my car phone holder. I’m sure that any rectangular case could be used for this purpose, as long as it’s large enough to place the phone in and take it out without a struggle. I cut two rectangular holes in the hard case itself, one to view the screen and one for the charger location.

Since my car is so old, I don’t have a auxiliary connection but I do have a cassette tape adapter. So my cable for my cassette tape adapter is hanging on the right side of my phone holder. Although it covers my car climate temperature control as well as my car climate mode control, I don’t usually need to access those often. I can also flip up the phone holder and peer underneath if I need to.

In my car I tend to use the Hitch Knot in order to secure my rope. I keep an extra rope tied with a Hitch Knot, attached to one of the bars to my front vents. I do this in case I need to hang anything in the front area of the car. Although the item can’t be heavy, it’s still handy in dire situations when I need to attach a bag quickly.

For my trunk area, I’m not a big fan of simple placing my groceries in the back of my car. I’ve had more than a few incidences when I took a turn in my car and my items from my grocery bags slipped out of the bags. As a precaution, I now hook my bags to the interior of my car. There are a number of ways to keep your groceries contained while in your trunk, this is just the way I do it since I don’t have a lot of trunk space. I use carabonders for the heavier items and velcro straps for the lighter items.

I’ve seen some people use cardboard boxes to contain their loose items in their trucks or even laundry baskets. I pretty much don’t have a separate trunk so my method can’t take up too much room. Also, my carabiners are pretty good at keeping bottles upright.

Needed A Phone Holder For The Car

February 15, 2016August 12, 2018 / Yen-Van Tran / 2 Comments

02.15.2016

0800

Materials:

Shoelace
Carabiner
Metal rings
Box that would fit my cell phone
Electrical tape (try to match the same color as the new cell phone holder)

So I made this phone holder in 2011, it was right around the time when the statistic of distracted driving started becoming an issue. Quite frankly, I don’t text and drive, I enjoy driving when I’m driving. The idea of getting pulled over for a ticket is also not one of my goals. However, I still used my GPS map when I drove to new locations. I did research different types of phone holders for cars and I wasn’t happy with any of the designs.

I like to keep surfaces clean, mostly because I hate to move things when I wipe down a surface, and then move them back. The mounting units that came with the phone holders would either have a set holder that would attach to surfaces or they were movable. There was the option of using the devices that had a suction cup to stay attached to my windshield, but if my windshield temperature got too cold, it would slowly release the suction and the entire device would fall down.

I love the Law of Gravity. I really do. I utilize it in almost everything I design or make. This was my solution to my problem.

I used the black case that my 1 TB external hard drive, and used rings to hang the case from my vent system in my car. I cut a rectangular hole on the bottom so that I could attach the charging cord. I cut out a rectangular hole so that I could see the screen when I drove and I used electrical tape to clean the edges. (I use electrical tape when the environment calls for some sort of heat fluctuation.) The holder is slightly bigger than the phone, but I figured, iPhones are getting larger with each generation so why not.

I have an old car but I still love looking at this contraption. It’s just amusing to see my solutions. It’s not the prettiest iPhone holder, nor do I think it would sell, but I didn’t go out any buy anything and it still works to this day.