Fabric Lined Drawers

Some of you may remember my post a couple months back about the painted turquoise desk.  Once I had finished the exterior, I began to focus on what I'd put in the drawers.  I looked at some of the different contact papers they carry at Walmart, but I was very unimpressed.  I even went so far as to look up specialty contact papers online and was shocked at how expensive everything was.  It seemed that my drawers would just have to stay unlined.

Then, the fabric happened.  I'd been playing around with some old quilting fabric scraps to cover cardboard shoe-boxes and happened to leave the fabric sitting out on my desk.  It matched PERFECTLY!  I knew I had to use it.

First, I lay the fabric in the bottom of each drawer and used a box cutter along the corners to cut it down to size.  (Some of the tutorials I looked up online suggested an Exacto blade, but my Exacto blade was pretty wimpy and I found the box cutter to be a lot sturdier.)  Once I had the fabric the right shape, I used a foam brush to coat the bottoms of the drawers with Mod Podge and pressed the fabric in place.  To make sure everything stayed, I went back with a couple more layers of Mod Podge after the first coat had dried.  Finally, the next day, I coated everything with a couple of layers of clear varnish.

The result is a really pretty vintage look that goes great with my desk.  One thing that I didn't expect is how the glue dulled and yellowed the colors of the fabric.  Fortunately, my fabric started out pretty bright, so it still looks good.  It might be a good thing to keep in mind though, when choosing your drawer lining fabric.  Another thing that surprised me was how rough it all ended up.  Even with the coats of varnish, it's still very rough to the touch.  This hasn't caused me any problems though, and it may even keep my things from sliding around my drawers so much.