Soft Pockets Safety Glasses Storage

In the process of getting organized for the newFIRST youth robotics season, we took on the challenge of organizing our accumulated motley collection of safety glasses. After disinfecting them, and polishing out light scratches where we could, we needed to come up with a better way to store them.

Our main criteria was:

Not a box.

We thought something like a fabric shoe bag would be perfect - with soft pockets to slip the glasses into. But we wanted something light and easily portable, with smaller pockets for the safety glasses. Scrounging around, I found some left over silky fabric from last summer's DIY Dashboard Cover .

Voila! A silky pockets safety glasses storage system!

In addition to safety glasses, you'll need:

• Fabric
• Sewing machine or decent hand sewing skills
• Scissors
• Measuring tape
• Clothes hanger

Okay, for you uber textiles people, make a pattern for your desired safety glasses holder design. I'm more of a quick measure, cut and sew kind of person for something like this, and the end result is probably clear evidence of that "sew from the hip" mentality - but it works for my purposes!

Overall dimensions for this piece:

• 15" wide
• 36" long (for 18 inch lengths when hung over the hanger)
• 3-4 - 6" deep pockets in two rows, on each side

Safety glasses, on average, are about 5 inches long, and to best protect your glasses, you want at least 4 inch deep pockets, if not the full 5 inches. My initial idea was to kind of hook the glasses into the pockets by an earpiece, for ease of use. You'll see I fell an inch or so short of that goal, so learn from my mistake and give yourself a good couple of extra inches on your pocket measurements.

I wanted my safety glass pocket holder to be able to store about a dozen glasses. I measured out a 3 foot long piece of fabric that, folded in half, makes an 18 inch length, about 15 inches wide, that can store 6-8 glasses per side. I used the remnants of the fabric to create the pocket strips - 2 strips, (that should be 7 inches wide - do I say, not as I did) - per side.

After I cut my strips , I marked where I wanted to afix the pocket strips, and where I wanted my pocket divisions on each strip.

Attach each strip where you marked its placement, finish/hem the edge of each pocket strip, then stitch in your pocket separators.

Since I was using the silky fabric, I rolled the edges and stitched along the roll, which finished the edges nicely and eliminated the stringy stuff.

I ended up using a pants hanger because it had a nice flat top. I reinforced the hole for the hanger by stitching an edge around it.

Slip your glasses into each pocket, and you're all set! Hang by a workbench or toolbox, and your safety glasses should stay safe and scratch free!

I think my next go-round would probably be a sturdier fabric than the silky stuff, and with deeper pockets. For use with teams, I would also use corresponding numbers on glasses and pockets to help keep better track of inventory.