I recently shared our new maximalist toy room and I got a lot of questions about the Ikea storage cube covers so I thought we could share how we made them. Elizabeth Partridge, who made my dress from our “>Fableism/Harmony launch, developed them and she said they were such a breeze to make!
I’ve had the idea to make covers for my Ikea cubes in our toy room for years now. At the time I thought of it, the walls were white and the boxes were beige and I wanted nothing else than to put some color on them! They’re so boring as is!
I imagined a mix of colors and pattern to create an epic focal point. I bought all these amazing colorful stripes from Spoonflower and had recently bought a bunch of the Ikea Kallax storage units off of Facebook Marketplace to put around the room. I had bought some cubes off of Amazon and they were rather rubbish–immediately bent and destroyed. The ones from Ikea are much better. They also have harder plastic ones too.
Once we put the wallpaper up, then painted the walls lilac, THEN added a green rug it was all feeling like too much. If I had selected a quiter pattern for the bins that would have been one thing, but I, of course, selected loud, colorful ones and knew immediately that I didn’t want them all covered, but just a few here and there. Like the wallpaper in the back, I used one of House of May’s big stripes in licorice/lilac, which coordinated super well. I love how it ties everything together!
I envisioned them going different directions too–horizontal and vertical for ultimate fun.
Here’s how to make the Ikea storage cube covers!
Ikea Storage Cube Covers
Difficulty:
BeginnerTime:
30 minutes for eachMaterials
- Cardboard (to make templates/pattern pieces)
- Rotary cutter (or pinking/fabric shears)
- Fabric
- Matching thread
- Sewing machine
- Iron
Instructions
Making the templates/pattern pieces
- For this project you’ll need to make 3 templates. The front, the wrap around back and sides, and the handle.
- For the front piece, cut your cardboard to 13.5 x 13.5 inches.
- For the back and sides you’ll cut one long piece of fabric, so cut your cardboard template to 13.5 x 21 inches. (If this doesn’t seem long enough to wrap around 3 sides of the box, don’t worry, you’ll be cutting this on the fold of the fabric).
- For the handle, cut cardboard to 8×3 inches. This measurement can be changed to suit your own preference.
Cutting the fabric
- Cut 1x Front
- Cut 1x back and side making sure the short edge is placed on the fold of the fabric. Your fabric piece when cut should be 42 x 13.5 inches.
- Cut 1x handle
- Tip: If you’re using a rotary cutter, place a thimble on the index finger of your dominant hand to help avoid any nasty cuts!
- Tip: If you’re using a fabric that frays a lot, you might want to consider cutting out with pinking shears. Alternatively, you could do a zigzag stitch around the raw edges of each pattern piece.
Making the handle
- On the short side, fold in 1 inch and press. Repeat on the other short edge.
- On the long edge, fold in 1 inch and press. Top stitch the long edge down.
- Repeat on the other long edge.
Assembling the handle to the front piece
- Place the handle where you’d like it to be on the box. I placed mine around a third of the way down, and centered across the width.
- Pin in place.
- On your machine, carefully sew a one inch square on each short edge of the handle. You may want to go over this a few times to make sure it’s nice and strong. Once sewn, press.
Sewing the side seams
- With wrong sides together, sew the side seam using ½ inch seam allowance. Make sure you’re sewing the short sides together! Press the seams open.
- Repeat for the second side seam.
Hemming the raw edges
- Press down the raw edge ¼ inch. Topstitch then press.
- Repeat with the remaining raw edge.
- Tip: Use a hot hemmer to help with pressing down the raw edges. OR run a line of stitching round each raw edge at ¼ inch seam allowance and use the threads as a guide to turn the fabric down.
Put it on
- Place the newly finished cover on your Ikea box and admire! (it might feel a bit of a squeeze but try to line up the seams with the corners of the front for a snug fit)
Tips
- If you’re making more than one, do everything in batches rather than making one then starting the next. Cut everything out, make all the handles, etc.
As soon as we put them on, Felix got home from school and knew EXACTLY how to make an artist statement. And if Cattelan has anything to say here, this is now worth 6.2 million dollars. Thank you son!
I still think it would be great fun to recover all the boxes in a variety of colors and patterns so if somebody does this, please share it so we can all see it! Tag us so we can see it!
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