The Laundry Monster Cometh...

Growing up with three younger sisters meant that there was always a LOT of dirty laundry waiting to be washed!  Often my mother would refer to the ever-growing pile as "the Laundry Monster" whom she could never permanently slay.  Now that I have a family of my own to take care of, I too have a "Laundry Monster" ever present!  But what better way is there to do battle with a monster... than with another monster? 

Behold!  I give you the space-saving Laundry Monster Hamper! 

This vicious beast will happily eat and conceal all of your dirty clothing until the next laundry day!  A convenient zipper along the bottom of the monster then allows you to quickly transfer your stinky socks to the washing machine with minimal effort.  The shape of the monster is based on the shape of the hanger he has in his head, which allows the monster to be hung just about anywhere.

The monster is made from blue fabric and black lining fabric that began 36 inches long and 20 inches wide.  I angled the top of the fabric pieces to mimic the angles in the hanger that would form the monster's head. 



Using paper, I created some templates and played around with the monster's face until I found a look that I liked.  I then traced the mouth onto the wrong side of the blue fabric and cut out the eyes and teeth from white fused plasic bags.  The first tricky part came with arranging the teeth within the mouth backwards in preparation for sewing.

I had to sandwich the teeth between the blue and black fabric facing out from the mouth.  I made sure to pin them in place in such a way that as I sewed along the mouth outline I would sew through them.

After sewing on my outline, I cut out the center of the mouth and clipped the curved edges.  I also bent some wire into the shape of the mouth outline for some reinforcement.  The moment of truth came when I turned the fabric right-side out!

Ta Da!  The teeth ended up facing inside the mouth and all of the raw sewn edges are neatly hidden.  I then slipped the wire ring between the fabric and the lining and sewed again around the mouth to hold it in place. 

After embroidering the eyes on, all that was left was to sew on the back of the monster, leaving openings at the top for the hanger and the bottom for the zipper.  Once those were in place the beast was finished!



...just remember to regularly brush and floss to prevent sock build-up.