Another Knock Off

I am a huge fan of West Elm. Bill and I even worked a stop in on our anniversary trip to Boston a few years ago. Unfortunately, we live about two and a half hours from the closest store. That's probably a good thing for my wallet though! I have been pining over this felt storage bin since seeing it in their catalog several months ago. I had some gray felt leftover from an organizer I made for school, so I decided to try and make one for myself.

I sketched out a rough drawing on my chalkboard wall. I'm a very visual person, so its super helpful for me to see something drawn out before attempting to create it.

I wanted the bin to fit on the shelves in my craft room. Since the shelves are 11 inches deep, I planned for the bins to be the same. I laid my fabric out on the bed to cut out four 8 by 11 inch rectangles and one 11 by 11 inch square. I turned around to grab my scissors and then saw this:

Either Simon finds felt really comfortable, or he wasn't too excited about me spending time working on a project that doesn't involve him. I'm going with the latter!

Once I finally convinced Simon to move, I cut out the felt pieces that I needed. The assembly was very easy. I sewed the rectangular sides together first, and then attached the bottom. I was very excited to see the results of my handy work, but instead I got this:

Womp womp. The bin needed some structure to keep the sides standing up. I went down to our recycling bin and grabbed a pasta box. After cutting the box into strips, I sprayed each one with some adhesive and stuck them inside the bin. This worked like a charm.

Working on all of these projects has resulted in having a lot of extra fabric to store. Luckily the bin served this purpose well.

Unfortunately, there was still more fabric that needed a home. I had plenty of felt left, so I just whipped up another bin. Now all of the fabric fits perfectly, with space to spare for future projects. The bins fit perfectly on the shelves in the craft room.

They're certainly not fancy, but I like that they match and they are able to fit a whole lot of fabric. I especially like that they were free since I already had the felt. That sure beats the $24 price tag for one of the West Elm version! I would like to jazz them up a bit. I wish I knew how to embroider, but that's a no go at this point. I'm thinking about using some sort of iron-on thing to create labels for them. What do you think?

Have you DIY-ed something lately because you didn't want to pay for it at a store? This seems to be happening quite a bit around here lately!

Thanks for reading,
Kathleen