With much more time to craft recently, we’ve been really enjoying creating new projects. Hopefully you’ve been keeping up with our latest crafts on our social media accounts. In this blog, we’re discussing our William Morris Storage Boxes! For Easter, we created a few for our Easter gifting – filled to the brim with Easter treats! You could make this craft for any occasion, Christmas, birthdays and so on, or as a craft for yourself to make your storage solutions that little bit prettier! We like that it’s a sustainable gifting idea. It’s a gift wrap option but then it doubles as a storage box as part of the gift.

What you’ll need:

• Your choice of Morris floral fabrics (the design could depend on occasion – Mallow wine for Christmas for example) We used Brother Rabbit in both red and blue, perfect for Easter!
• Natural drill fabric
• Fabric stiffener
• Sewing machine and materials
• Easter treats to fill the gift box!

To make your storage box:

1. Cut a piece of natural drill fabric 74cm long by 19cm high.
2. Then, cut a piece of firm fabric stiffener 69cm long by 17.5cm high and iron to the back of the drill fabric. We used a bit of old cloth between the stiffener and the iron so as not to get any residue on the iron.
3. Cut a piece of Red Brother Rabbit fabric 71.5cm long by 19cm high.
4. Cut two squares, 1 drill 22cm x 22cm and 1 Red Brother Rabbit 20cm x 20 cm.
5. Next, you’ll need a rabbit motif for the front. We drew ours on a lined piece of paper with 2 circles and them used the lines as guides to draw the ears. You could always trace this too if you find that easier. Especially if you’re using a more complex outline than us! We thought it would be cute if you’re doing this as a sustainable gift box idea for Christmas to do a Christmas tree or a bell.
6. Fold the stiffened drill fabric in half to find the centre and pin the rabbit motif onto the drill fabric, sew around the edge of the rabbit in matching thread.
7. Fold the drill in half with the rabbit motif to the inside. Sew up the side seam then press the seam open. Take the drill square and pin to the inside of the box. Ensuring the face of the drill is inside the box. (If the base is forming a saggy bottom, it is at this point you can take any excess into the seam allowance.)
8. Machine the base in place and then turn the box to the right side.
9. Iron to remove any creases.
10. Take the Brother Rabbit fabric and with the pattern facing inward sew a seam down the side. Press open with hot iron.
11. Working with the pattern to the inside and the square of rabbit fabric face up so it can be seen within as bottom of the box.
12. Start to pin the bottom of the box to the sides, ensure the pattern is facing forwards from the back, machine in place. Leave the Brother Rabbit box facing inwards.
13. Fold the seam allowance at the top of the drill box inward and press in place. Put the Brother Rabbit box inside the drill box so you can accurately decide on the seam allowance and tuck the seam back to face the drill.
14. Pin the boxes to each other leaving the drill box slightly higher.
15. Thread your machine with the cream tread on the spool at the top and the red thread on the bobbin. We then removed the front drawer of my machine to make it easy to sew the two boxes together with the drill on top.

We hope you love the little storage boxes, filled to the brim with Easter goodies for all dietary requirements! They will also be brilliant storage boxes. They could be used for hiding cables, tidying up a bookshelf, for cosmetics and so on. If you make your own, we’d love to see! Remember to tag us in your photos ☺️

We have lots of crafting blogs if you’re interested in reading about all the other crafts we’ve made from our licensed William Morris fabrics.