Bring some organization to your living room, closet or office with an easy-to-make felt box. You can adjust our instructions for any size you need: large boxes for kids’ toys, medium sizes to hold scarves or clutches, smaller ones to corral desktop clutter or a tiny box for a nightstand jewelry cache.
A large felt box is a quick project that can be sewn up during the evening while watching your favorite movie. We filled our living room box with plush toys but it could contain stacks of DVDs, video games, game controllers and remotes, your current needlework project or hide your magazine stash.
What You’ll Need to make one large felt box
- 1 3-foot-square piece of 2mm-thick felt (we used a new moving blanket from UHaul-$8!)
- Ruler or 12-inch square template
- Fabric marker
- Scissors
- Pins
- Sewing needle and large-eye embroidery needle
- Thread in matching color
- Embroidery floss in contrasting color
If using a large piece of felt, measure a 3-foot-square piece and cut it out. With your measuring tape or template, divide the felt piece into nine equal 1-foot squares. Cut out the four 1-foot-square corners (save these pieces for other projects down the road—waste not, want not!). You’ll have a cross-shape piece of felt with five squares; one on each side of a center square.
Bring two of the side squares up from the center and pin along the edge. Using a needle and thread or a strand of embroidery floss, sew a running stitch about ½-inch in from the edge the length of the side.
You can use a sewing machine for this step if you prefer (personally, I like the basic task of sewing by hand) or, if you avoid sewing when given the chance, you could use fusible tape to hold the joins in place before adding a decorative stitch that will fortify the seams.
I dressed up the edges with a contrasting blanket stitch. This is an optional step, really, but adds some nice detail to the simple construction.
I wanted a bold stitch so I used all the stands of my embroidery floss in a large-eye embroidery needle. Start the blanket stitch by bringing your thread up through the fabric ½-inch from the edge and down again about a quarter inch diagonally from the first. Push the needle up again so that the stitch is aligned along the bottom with the first.
With the thread loop under the needle, pull it through the fabric until the thread lies tight against the emerging thread. Take the needle to the next point a quarter inch diagonally and repeat the stitch along your edge. See a diagram of the blanket stitch here.
You can make quite a few boxes from one cheap moving blanket. Use a large felt box like this for kids’ toys or measure cubbies in a storage unit like IKEA’s KALLAX shelving and create several boxes that fit within the cubes.
© Caruth Studio