Sofa Caddy

So you’re sitting at your couch and your cat takes up residence in your lap and starts making kitty bread on you and you realize his claws are SHARP! You need a nail clipper stat but there is a fuzzy anchor in your lap and no nail clipper within reach…

Does this only happen to me?

While a sofa caddy doesn’t solve this problem 100% of the time, I figured it might help some of the time. I also needed to make some other things accessible while sitting at the couch so this was a good one day project for me.

You’ll need 2 fabrics: the pretty fabric that shows and the backing fabric. Try to pick something that won’t slide on your couch for the backing. For example, satin is very slippery and a bad choice. Flannel is a good choice for a microfiber couch which is what I went with.

Materials:

• 1/2 yard of fabric
• 1/2 yard of backing fabric
• 1/2 yard of lightweight fusible interfacing
• one package of bias tape

Cut one of each of these rectangles from the fabric, backing fabric and interfacing:

• 11″ x 30″ – sofa caddy base piece
• 11″ x 10″ – large pocket
• 7″ x 13″ – small pockets

Fuse the all the interfacing pieces to the back of the corresponding fabric piece.

Lay the sofa caddy base fabric on top of the backing fabric, wrong sides together.

Baste the 2 pieces together using a 1/4″ seam.

Do the same for the 2 pockets: lay the fabric on top of the backing fabric and baste. Using the bias tape, bind the top edge of both pockets.

On the small pockets piece, mark a vertical line 6 1/2″ from the edge

On the large pocket piece, mark a vertical line 5 1/2″ from the edge.

Lay the small pockets piece on top of the big pocket piece, lining up the vertical lines so that they are on top of each other.  Pin the fabrics in place.

Stitch down the marked line, make sure to sew a bit past the bias tape.

Stitch a 2nd line 1/4″ away from the vertical line you just stitched.

Now take the small pocket piece and line up the edges so they match the larger pocket underneath. You’ll have to put a fold in the bottom of each small pocket . Pin everything in place.

Place the pockets on the base piece, lining them up with the bottom of the base and baste the pockets in place.

The last step is to bias tape around the edges.

Find a handy sofa arm to put the caddy on and tuck the end without pockets between the seat cushion and the arm and you’re good to go!