From Blah to Beautiful: The Journey of a Fabric Box

I worked on a major overhaul of my sewing space over the holiday weekend (yay!). It’s not completely finished yet, but I thought I’d share the process I used to create a big element of the re-do: cute storage using stuff I already had. Okay, so I bought the fabric, but I already had these fabric storage bins (I originally purchased them for another room, and never used or returned them), and did not want to spend more time or money on searching for the perfect organizing supplies. Here’s how it goes:

Start with a box…any square/rectangular box will do.

Measure the bottom and sides of your box. My boxes are about 10.5″ by 10.5″ on the bottom, and each side measured 11″ by 11″.

I wanted the liner to cover the inside AND outside of the box, so I determined the measurements of my cut pieces using this formula:

Base/bottom: add 1/2″ to each side to allow for 1/4″ seam allowances, so my cut piece measured 11″ by 11″.
Sides: (inside length + outside length +1/2″ for seam allowances) x (width + 1/2″ for seam allowances), so my 4 cut pieces each measured 11″ by 22.5″.

Sew the sides together. I used my serger, but a straight stitch machine will work just fine.

With all four pieces joined together, sew the two open sides to each other, forming a big tube.

Sew the base to one end of the “tube”.

Check to make sure it fits!

I decided to decorate these boxes with more fabric, and wanted a slightly rustic look, so I serged the edges of 6″ strips of toile with my trusty black thread:

And in true Nester-fashion, I hot-glued the trim right on to the liners. Voila!