A spot for the toys

Busy busy lately! Hence the lack of blog love. Most recent project? Some fabric boxes to store lil' bambinos toys and such. My MIL taught me how to make these last weekend. In the scheme of sewing, it's a pretty easy project. Much more enjoyable than curtains, that's for sure!

If you want to give them a shot you can attempt to follow my rough instructions below. You can also make handles for the sides, but mine are in a bookcase so you wouldn't be able to see them anyways.

You need about 1 yard of fabric for the inside and 1 yard of fabric for the outside for 2 baskets. Also, you'll need fusible batting to make it more sturdy. You only attach the batting to the outer fabric so you don't need too much of it.

To make finished baskets that are about 12” long x 10” deep x 10” tall, you can use the below picture for the dimensions of a pattern to use.

Cut a straight line in both your inner and outer fabric to get started. Pin pattern in place on fabric (doesn’t matter which fabric you start with). No need to mark. Cut fabric. 

Repeat the last step until you have 2 pieces of cut inner fabric, 2 pieces of cut outer fabric and 2 pieces of cut fusible batting. 

Put first piece of fusible batting down on a flat surface with the fusible (rough) side up. Place wrong side of outer fabric on top (flipped from picture below). Iron. Repeat with second fusible piece and outer fabric. 

Pin bottoms of outer fabric pieces right sides together. Sew together with a ½” seam allowance. 

Open and pin down the flaps. 

Sew in place to keep flat, trying to sew in a straight line (best to keep edge of fabric with edge of foot). I'm not so good at sewing in a straight line.

Pin sides of outer fabric pieces together. Sew each side together with a ½” seam allowance. Open as best you can and pin down the flaps. Sew in place to keep flat as you did with the bottom. 

Pin together the corners (see pic for visual to orient), sew together with ½” seam allowance. Don’t have to sew down the flaps this time. 

Now for inner fabric. Pin bottoms of inner fabric pieces right side together. Pin. Sew together with a ⅝” seam allowance (to make it smaller than the outer fabric pieces to fit inside). Don’t have to sew down the flaps with the inner fabric, but you do want to just iron them down. Pin sides of inner fabric pieces, sew together with ⅝” seam allowance. Then do the corners. 

Flip inner fabric right-side out. Place inside outer fabric box, which is still wrong-side out (right sides of inner and outer fabric should be together). Pin tops of both pieces together. Unfortunately I didn't take any pics of this step, which is hard to visualize. Sorry about that! Baby brain. Sew inner and outer fabric pieces together with a ½” seam allowance at the top, but leave about a 3-4” hole to pull the fabric back through. If you forget and sew the whole thing together like I did on one of mine, just tear some stitching out. Flip fabric out through hole (may take some working depending on the size of the hole you left). 

Once you've flipped the fabric right-side out, you will want to pin in place and then do a top stitch to get a finished look. Do this with ⅜” seam allowance. Hand stitch the place where the fabric was flipped out (also failed to get a pic of this step). 

Iron fabric if it got all wrinkly and iron sides to make more defined corners.

Starting to come together!