Clothespin Holder {A Mother's Day Tribute}

 My Mom, last year at Lindsay's wedding
Isn't she beautiful?

I remember growing up in Menan, and every spring/summer/fall my mom would hang laundry up on the line. I remember there always being clothes on the line, drying. With 8+ people in the house at any one time, there was always tons of laundry to do. Our clothesline was huge. The lines were long and very sturdy. They seemed to be really high, too, but that might be because I was so little when we lived there. I especially liked to help out putting up towels or taking them down. They were the easiest! I remember having to run out and bring them all in really quick when an afternoon thundershower would roll through, which happened often enough. Yes, the clothes, especially the jeans, ended up slightly stiffer than they would coming out of the dryer, but nothing beats the smell of fresh laundry, right off the line. So, Mom, this post is for you! Happy Mother's Day :)



Now that it is May, and my husband set up the clothesline, I decided I wanted to start drying clothes out on the line. Yesterday I ended up doing two full loads of laundry, and drying them on the line. It was so warm and dry outside that I think it took less time for most of the clothes to dry than it would have in the dryer :)

Here's my clothesline. There are three lines at the moment, but there's room for two more...I'm thinking I'll have Matt hook me up and put up the last two lines :)

OK, I have a confession to make. I didn't have clothespins yesterday when I put the clothes on to wash. I had to make a run to the store to find some. I spent $3 on 75 clothespins, and I'm thinking I could probably use 2 more...But I didn't have a place to put my pins. So I decided to make myself a clothespin holder.

I got some ideas from one of my crafting newsletters. Yesterday's post was all about clothespin holders. I decided on this idea, using a placemat to make a holder. Unfortunately, I couldn't find a placemat that I wanted to use, so I actually used some of my scraps and used a pant leg from a pair of old pants of Matt's.


First, I cut out a section of the pant leg. I didn't use the very bottom, although that would have been nice since there's already a seam there...but, no, I decided it wasn't a big enough "pocket". I  turned it inside out, sewed the bottom (in this case, the skinnier side. The pant leg kind of tapered, and I wanted the wider side to be the opening.), and turned it right side out. I wanted the seams to look sort of finished, so I folded down the top, and topstitched one line all the way around. Then, I turned it inside out, and stitched close to the "cut" edge. {Does that make sense?} I have black thread in the top of my machine, and gray thread in the bobbin (don't ask) and that makes for some varied stitching :) You can see in the picture it is still a little raw, but I figured that would be ok.

See the two different colored stitches?

Ok, for the handle, I took a 2 1/2" section of the pant leg, cut it down to where I thought would make a good handle, sewed around all the edges. Then I sewed it onto the back of the bag. I used a zigzag stitch, plus topstitched with a straight stitch all around the edges. I want to make sure that baby stays on! I then attached velcro to the inside, right on top of where the handle attaches. I put the other side of the velcro on the end of the handle.

All in all, this took me about 20 minutes, and by the time the clothes were done drying, my clothespin bag was ready to hold clothespins for me :)

There it is :) I like this idea better than the ones with a clothes hanger to hold it on the line, mainly because I don't have any clothes hangers, and also because it will NOT fall off the line :) I slide it right down the line with me as I go, and it makes my life easier! I don't think my mom ever had a holder, or at least I don't remember one. The pins would just stay on the line, spread out, and they'd be there to use as needed. Maybe it didn't get as dusty in Menan as it does here in LA, but I'm thinking that to keep my pins clean, I'll need to keep them inside :)

One thing I kept thinking as I was hanging the clothes out was that the energy that was drying the clothes was totally free. Love it!

~Pam

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