Fabric boxes

I have been spending some of these cold afternoons learning how to make fabric boxes and working on altering the design from SheCanSew blog I started off with.   The stripy one has iron on stiff interfacing, on the ends there are "slots" to fasten the folded in ends together and is finished by zigzagging on all the edges. 

Doing in it with two fat quarters and especially purchased stiff interfacing and all the cotton for the edges made it quite expensive.  I was really looking for an easy way to use up stash and recycled materials to make cheap storage  solutions.  I had a look on You Tube for more ideas too.

The box on the left I made the same size overall, but started by putting the right sides together and stitching all round before turning and quilting.  That meant cutting into the piece to make the flaps and making turned in edges which was a fiddle as much as making the slots.  When I folded it up occurred to me that I could put a button on the inside flap and then made buttonholes through the other two.  

My third attempt was to use a very stiff denim material and face it with a poly-cotton fabric. It stands up well on its own and does not need extra quilting. I tried out using ties to fasten the ends of the box. It seems to work quite well. 

I am going to road test these fabric boxes before publishing a pattern.