Fabric Woven Tote Tutorial

For Savannah’s 8th birthday party I wanted to come up with a simple craft that the girls could complete. I wanted something that would be useful, cute and I didn’t want the process of creating it to be messy. I don’t like a whole lot of mess with my own kids, so I knew I would not be able to handle it with 12 little girls.

When my mom was visiting from Texas we went to the dollar store to pick up a few things for the party. I spotted these plastic totes in the organizing section of the store and instantly thought that I could have the girls weave something through the holes. I was thinking some kind of ribbon and then mom suggested fabric…….hello? Such a great idea! I happen to have a whole lot of fabric hanging around (wink, wink), so this was perfect. And at $1 per tote, you can’t beat that…….$12 for a craft for 12 girls. Of course the fabric probably cost me money, but it doesn’t count since I already owned it.

So if you would like to make your own Fabric Woven Tote Basket, here is what you’ll need……

Supplies:

1 plastic tote basket (with holes)

4 strips of fabric

Pinking Shears

Scissors

Directions:

To start, I cut fabric strips 2″ x the width of the fabric. I cut a bunch of different prints and cut way more than I needed since I didn’t know what the girls would choose.

Savannah passed out the tote baskets to her friends so she could decide who got what color (we had green, orange, pink and blue). Then I had the girls get in line and they each got to select four fabric strips. I encouraged them to get creative. I said they could choose all the same fabric, 2 different fabrics, all different fabrics…….whatever they wanted! It was fun to see their choices.

This craft went over really well with the girls. Some of them needed a little help getting their weaving started so that the fabric ended where they wanted to tie the knots, but some of them picked up on it right away. Also, a few of the girls finished early and helped some of the others out. I helped tie the knots for some of the girls. I showed them how I chose to weave my basket, but again, I let them do it however they wanted since it was their basket.

Once the girls all finished their weaving and had tied the knots, I came around with my pinking shears and cleaned up the ends by cutting off the selvages and evening out any strips if they happened to need it (sometimes the fabric can stretch a bit).

I had some kraft paper tags and letter stickers. The girls made a tag for their totes. Some of them wrote their names (which was what I had intended), but some of them thought the fabric woven tote baskets were so cute that they wanted to use them as a little bed for their stuffed animals so they put their animals’ name on the tag. Then we tied the tag to the basket so we wouldn’t get any of them mixed up.

I would highly recommend this craft for the 8 and up crowd! I’m thinking any younger and they might get a bit frustrated with the weaving process, but this would be really fun for older girls too. The dollar store had so many different types of baskets that you could use if you would rather make more of a storage basket than a tote. So many options. And if you don’t have fabric lying around, ribbon would be another good option!