Make Craft Game

The first step to making the deck box is coming up with a pattern. I find patterns are particularly important when it comes to sewing. Great shock, I know. But some crafts you can approach without a plan. Others… not so much. I have made many lopsided projects due to a lack of patterning.

Anyway, I knew that I wanted to end up with a box shape, and I feel that creating a cross lends itself well to making a square. The major thing I wanted to take into consideration was the size of the card. The card size dictates the height and width of the deck box. The depth of the deck box was a bit more arbitrary. I measured the stack of cards, but it is the most variable measurement based on need.

I did choose to extend one of the ends so it would make the lid come down over the side. This let me have a snap clasp in the front, which I feel elevated the project. I love sewing, but when a project is missing finishing touches (like connectors), the project can sometimes fall flat.

The next step in making the deck box was cutting the fabric. This is where I did something I regret, I cut the plain and patterned fabric according to the design. They were both singular pieces.

This is what I should have also done for the fabric stabilizer. But no, I saw that I had some scraps and thought I could use them in this project. While it did cover the desired spaces, the gaps did cause some issues. My desire to use scraps outvoted doing the project in a more practical way.

One thing that I quickly discovered was that smaller pieces of fabric stabilizer don’t adhere to fabric as well as a large piece might. There is just not enough of a surface to really cause the material to stick in a meaningful way. It looked fine coming off the iron but quickly started to fall apart. But I plowed forward, being the stubborn one that I am.

I did learn a bit from some of my earlier projects and decided to use the stabilizing fabric on the plain pattern. This meant that the project wouldn’t need to be turned inside out and therefore put strain on the stabilizer. Or that would be the concept if I hadn’t cut it into smaller pieces.

I started to sew the inside by joining the fabrics to their adjacent sides. The box came together fairly, as the prep work gave me a good edge to work against. I sewed the side of the main box and then put it aside and switched to the outer box. This one has some longer edges because I wanted to do a fold-over effect (more on that later), but the core box is sewn together in a similar way.

One thing I did when cutting the fabric was create a hole in the front of the deck box. I did this to help grip cards and remove them from the box. The issue with this is that the fabric acts a little differently when in one direction versus another, especially with tension on its opposite side. This is one thing I wish I had cut with either more slack or after combining the two.

The inside (plain fabric) box fits very snugly in the outside (patterned fabric) box. The patterned fabric had a bit more fabric around the edges because I wanted to do a fold-over seam. This is where I planned on folding the fabric twice. One to hide the edge of the fabric, the other to go over both fabrics and join them together.

This process was made a lot more difficult than needed, especially at the deck box opening. One thing I wish I had done was make fewer cuts. The fabric being uncut along most of the edges would have given a cleaner finish. But it still worked, even with some effort and the need to hand-sew one of the seams.

The last step for making the deck box was adding the snap. This is a pretty straightforward process as long as the holes from each side line up properly. I tried to put the box in its final position and create a hole going through the lid and the main body. This helps with position as you work with different sides.