Friday, January 7, 2011

Tutorial - Fabric Covered Boxes with Ribbon Ties - Part 2

Hi friends. Hope you're all having a great day.

I'm back with Part 2 of the Fabric Covered Box Tutorial. We're ready to start working with our fabric to make the outer and inner portions of the largest box.

A couple of thoughts on fabric selection...

I recommend using a geometric print or some other design that does not have a direction. You'll see that I used a sort of toile for my largest box here which means that my pattern is upside-down from some views. I don't mind but if you'd like your box to look more uniform, go with a directionless fabric.

I thought I'd throw out a plug for one of my favorite manufacturers of home decor fabric - Premier Prints. The fabric is incredibly reasonable and the weight is perfect for a project like this. You can find Premier Prints at many online retailers or directly through them. All three of the fabrics chosen for my first set of boxes were Premier Prints.

Here are the fabrics I chose for this next set. Two were purchased at Joann (I think they're Waverly) and the third was a Premier Print.


OK. Enough about that.

Take your fabric and fold it in half with right sides facing. Smooth it out on your work surface and place your cardboard cross on top. Trace a tight line all the way around your cross form using a pen or pencil. Then draw a second line about one inch out all the way around. I just eyeballed this. The measurement doesn't have to be exact.


I drew a little line in the corners connecting the outer line with the inner line. We're going to notch that line later.

Now remove the cardboard and cut through both pieces of fabric following the outer line.


Once you're done, separate your two pieces of fabric. One will wrap around the outside of your box and the other will cover the inside of the box. We're going to work with the inside piece first. It doesn't matter which is which.

Cut those notches on your interior fabric.


We're going to draw four more lines on this inside piece... about 1/8 of an inch to the inside on the four flaps as shown in the picture below. This is to account for the thickness of your cardboard. You'll see what I mean when we start mod-podging.


I like to use my iron and ironing board for this next step. We're going to glue a "hem" all the way around. I used a glue stick but you could use any kind of fabric glue or probably even white craft glue. I say use what you have on hand.

Starting with one of the flaps, apply glue all the way across then fold over onto your innermost line. I like to work from left to right.


After each fold, just run your hot iron over the hem. 

When you come to a corner, apply a bit of glue and fold the corner over as shown.


Now apply some glue to the top of that fold and continue down to the notch. Fold over and iron. 


Repeat this process all the way around.


When you get to your last flap, you'll need to do the corner on the right before you glue your flap down as shown in the photo below.


And that's it for your interior piece. It should look something like this.


Repeat this process of cutting fabric and glue hemming your interior pieces for the two smaller boxes.

That's it for today. 

I'll be back on Monday for the third and final part of this tutorial - attaching the fabric and ribbon.

Have a wonderful weekend!

* This project featured on Mod Podge Rocks here.

** Linked up to Get Your Craft On at Today's Creative Blog here.

1 comment:

  1. realhousewifeofcotoJanuary 9, 2011 at 2:02 PM

    Can't wait for the next installment.

    ReplyDelete