Okay, time for words!
First things first. Get a piece of fabric. I'm using a nice stiff outdoor fabric that I got from the value section! If you use something more like cotton quilting fabric, you might want to use some interfacing to stiffen it up.
You will also need an iron, an ironing board, D-rings, and quilt binding (the cotton kind that is about 3/4 inch wide), a needle and some thread.
I folded the fabric in half. It was a squarish shape to start. I didn't bother measuring or making sure it was really a perfect square because, after all, I was just going to fill it with dirt, right? So fold it in half and iron the crease in. I forgot to take a picture of that part...
Next, open the fabric up and fold the edges to line up with the crease you just ironed. Basically, you are dividing the fabric into fourths from top to bottom. Iron those creases in, too. Like this:
Bring your ironed edges into the middle and iron that. Now your fabric is marked into eighths and you didn't even have to measure a thing. Nice!
Here is how I marked out the short sides of my box. Fold the short edges towards the middle and try to make the folded section square. You want the top of the folded section to be as long as the side. This will not be perfect, but it's okay. Make it perfect if you want but I didn't want to measure anything. You'll see that I trimmed the right folded edge because the folds are not perfect. I took the picture right before I trimmed the right. I'm lazy but I do want it to look mostly decent LOL
Now here's the part that's a little confusing to explain. Unfold the square. The top eighth and the bottom eighth get folded back towards the middle. This is so I didn't have to finish the edges of my box. They just fold right in towards the middle and get ironed that way. When you fill your box the unfinished edge will be under the soil so it won't matter that they are ugly. Here's a picture where I'm trying to show you what it looks like but my ironing board is too skinny:
Here's another attempt at showing what I'm talking about:
Finally, I just ironed pieces turned it so it hangs over the dang board. So you see that there are long sides with folded edges, a bottom, short sides and a square area that will be come our corners:
Time for some farbic origami! take the two short edges of our "corner square section" and fold it so they touch. You are making a square into a triangle here:
You can see that the triangle will not be perfect. This is the phrase of the day. It will not be perfect, but it's okay. No trimming crooked edges this time though. Iron your triangle's crease:
Do that on all four corners. Now take your triangles and over lap two on each end, like so:
When you pin them you see a box for the first time!
Now Iron your creases again because they will get a little soft with all this manhandling you've been giving them:
Sew across the top of the short side. Try to catch all of the edges of the different layers of fabric. You can use a machine (if it's tough enough) or a serger, or you can do like me and just double thread a needle and use that. I chose a blanket stitch because it helps close up some of the raw edges you will see. You can use a whip stitch or maybe just a straight stitch. Whatever you use, remember it has to be strong enough to bear the load of flowers and dirt!
Next get a D-ring and some binding. I cut about 2" pieces of the binding and threaded it through my ring. Then I whipstitched the heck out of it. I put one on each end and one in the middle to help control sagging when the box is full:
Here's my not so perfect blanket stitch:
Viola! She is finsihed. Let me tell you, getting the flowers in can be a little bit of a challenge by yourself so get a helper or be prepared to make a mess!
In the end, it's so adorable it's totally worth the effort. Now I only have 7 more to go until I'm out of fabric! BTW, I just used some picture hangers to mount these on the sturdy wood fence. How you hang them is up to you!
