Well, I could go down to IKEA and buy some plastic crates. But that sounds almost sensible and practical, and so I don't want anything to do with it. Let's make some boxes!
Before starting to box, I looked around a bit for interesting patterns. A lot of the ones I found called for stuff like batting, or interfacing, or sewing machine needles that punch through cardboard, and I admit it, I don't have any of those. I'm sure I could get hold of one or two for a future project, but this box I wanted to start more quickly. Patience, what's that?
In the end, I settled on a great tutorial from The B-Line. You can find it here if you want to follow along!
The short version is this: cut out big felt circles, fold them into a box/bowl shape, sew, cut. Each layer of felt shows through where you cut, for these striking lines of colour.
The blog runner over there has made some really lovely boxes using this method, big and small. They look like something you could buy from a nice home & furniture store. My first box is, uh... less professional-looking.
But it has personality!?
Because I was making such a small box, I decided to only use two layers of felt, one on the outside and one to line. I didn't want the sides to be disproportionately thick. And I figured that since the box was so tiny, they weren't about to droop under their own weight.
As you can see, I did just four sides too. The tutorial is for boxes with like six or eight sides, but that would have left my box all corner and no flat side, and I knew that I wanted to try some appliqué.
This method of box-making is great for appliqué, because once you've folded in the circles and cut away the excess, you're left with a decent amount of spare felt. There's probably less if you're making a box with more sides. But I wanted that excess for my creative misadventures.
If you're wondering what stitch I used for the sewing, the answer is: all of them. This box is a mish-mash of experiments. I went for a contrast of bright yellow thread on green for the blanket stitch that holds the thing together. On the little Dedenne... it's really anyone's guess. Backstitching hadn't occurred to me yet, genius that I am, so anything that looks like a backstitch is actually a running stitch that I doubled back on itself. The rims of the ears are a blanket stitch with a running stitch next to it, and the cheeks and paws are... um... a dedicated frenzy stitch?
I started to regret the green contrast stitch about halfway through. But by then I had done the whiskers over it, and it was too late to turn back.
That yellow hamster thing, by the way, is a Pokemon from the new XY games. Its name is Dedenne and it's definitely not a Pikachu.
Did I nail it? I think I nailed it.
Pictured here with thread, tube of beads, and seam ripper. So that's three things down, eight hundred thousand more to find storage for. Let's go!
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