How-to: Upcycle Cardboard Record Album Covers for Fabric Storage

fabric folded around cardboard record album covers

Fabric storage can seem impossible.

Do you have your fabric stuffed in plastic bins? Tossed into brown paper grocery sacks? Stacked on a shelf, at first neatly, but then just crammed in wherever it will fit?

Goodness, I’ve done it all, but after a LOT of trial and error, a lot of fed-up afternoons searching for that one piece of fabric that I know must be somewhere but that I just can’t find, and a couple of wasted shopping trips in which I later discover, horrified, that I already owned something just like what I had bought, I finally figured out the perfect fabric storage system for me.

It involves every piece of fabric neatly folded around a uniformly-sized piece of cardboard, neatly sorted, stored, and visible on shelves measured and built around that uniform size. The fabric doesn’t wrinkle, crumble, or collapse behind other fabric. My children can pull a piece off of the shelves and carry it to our work table without causing an avalanche.

And that perfect, uniform cardboard that makes it all possible? I use cardboard record album covers, and it couldn’t be simpler.

center a cardboard record album cover at one end of the fabricWe’re record collectors, and so I stock up when I can find old records for free, or nearly so. Often, though, old records have been mistreated at some point in their lives, and with those 90% of records that I come across that are nearly unplayable, I make craft projects. You can likely find record albums and their cardboard covers similarly where you live. The beauty of the record album cover, however, is that it’s sturdy and of a uniform size, so if you have access to some other large amount of sturdy cardboard, uniformly-sized, to upcycle into fabric forms, then you’re in luck!

Lay out your fabric, and center a cardboard record album cover at one end of the piece. If the fabric is more than three times as wide as the record album cover, then fold it in half lengthwise first.

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2 thoughts on “How-to: Upcycle Cardboard Record Album Covers for Fabric Storage”

  1. Pingback: Make an Upcycled Cardboard Leaf Garland for Autumn

  2. Pingback: Crafting a Green World | How-to: Kid-Made Recycled Cardboard Pendants | Page: 1 | Crafting a Green World

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