Sewing room to nursery: Fabric baskets, cubes and toy storage

One of the top items on my registry was a cube shelf to double as a bookshelf and toy storage. My husband and I are both writers, so instilling a love of books and reading in our child is very important to me.

Not quite as important is my desire to not have my house be overtaken by baby stuff. We’ve painstakingly remodeled every room in the house over the past four years and I’m not ready to let it look like a toy store threw up in my living room.

Now I know there will be toys all over the place, but what is important to me is that they have a place to go at the end of the night and that’s where the fabric baskets come in. I designed them to fit inside four of the cubes so I can put baby toys in them so they are both accessible and out of the way when they’re not in use.

I picked up some heavy duty sew-in interfacing from the quilt shop and while it doesn’t hold a sharp corner when the basket is out of the cube, it does stand up straight on its own, is easy to sew through and doesn’t hold a crease from being folded during the construction process.

I only got enough to make one basket because I wasn’t sure how it would work out. But now that I know I like the interfacing, I’ll go get more and write up a tutorial complete with photos and product names when I make the remaining three baskets.

I got  little fancy with my design, using leftover border prints from the nursery curtains for the bottom and different colorways of a dog bone print for each side of the fabric basket. The dog bone prints are also from Aspen’s Line by Avlyn which I’ve used for all the sewn items in the nursery so far.

These baskets went together very quickly and aside from some maneuvering to get the bottom sewn onto the sides, was a relatively easy project as well. Plus I love how much they hold. I’m going to have lots more space for the abundance of baby toys I will likely accumulate.

So stay tuned, I’ll get a tutorial together soon. How soon depends of course on whether the little one arrives before I have a chance to make a run to the quilt shop this weekend for more supplies.

Make puppy crib quilt
Sew valances
Sew crib skirt
Make bobby covers to match the nursery decor
Make fabric baskets for the cube shelf that will double as toy box/book shelf
Paint the nursery
Get new carpet
Recover the rocking chair cushion
Set up the nursery