Throw Some Creativity Into Your Spring Cleaning – Make Your Own Shelf Liners

If spring-cleaning fever is upon you, try a creative approach to cleanup this year. When the weather begins to get nice out, I watch for cardinals in the yard, particularly the females.

It's the time of year when I start wanting to turn my attentions to my nest too, so I feel a kinship with her. If you want to relieve the monotony of cleaning light fixtures and cabinets, try this creative trick for beautifying your nest.

Make Fabric Shelf Liners With Flair

Replace your drawer and shelf liners. I've moved away from paper and use fabric now. Your local fabric store has inexpensive cotton fabric in many prints and colors that will brighten up your kitchen and make you feel great every time you open a drawer.

No Sew Shelf Liners

Even if you are not a sewer (that's someone who sews), you can buy pinking shears and go to town. (Pinking shears are special scissors that cut fabric in a series of peaks and valleys that inhibit raveling.)

If you do sew, try using a serger. If you watch the sales, they can be relatively inexpensive, and you can use them easily once you have learned the knack of threading them.

Making Shelf Liner Templates

Use a tape measure to make a template out of a discarded sheet or length of butcher paper. Make one template for each shelf and drawer size you want to line. Allow an extra half inch on all sides if you are serging or hemming. (Tape sheets of butcher paper together if you have to.)

Stabilize Your Fabric

Once you have a template, buy your fabric and enough heavyweight iron-on adhesive stabilizer to line all of the fabric. The stabilizer will be available on a bolt, like fabric, or on a roll. It's sticky on one side and will make a permanent bond when attached to the wrong side of the fabric. Once in place, the fabric will be stiff, permanently.

Iron the stabilizer to the fabric before you cut it, sticky side facing the back-side of the fabric, and always cut the stabilizer a little smaller than the fabric to avoid making a mess. Read the stabilizer directions before you start to iron. Temperature requirements vary, and some stabilizers like steam while others don't. If you get it wrong, the stabilizer won't stick. (This sounds harder than it is.)

Using your templates, cut the lengths of fabric you need. If you are pinking the edges, this will be the last step. If you are serging or hemming the edges, proceed to finish each liner on your machine of choice. Once complete, your liners can be washed in the washing machine on the gentle cycle and will last for years.

You can mix it up, buying coordinating fabrics and alternating them. You can also use a textured fabric like burlap, for say . . . a pot or utility drawer. Just be sure to wash the burlap before cutting it. Lining the shelves in the linen closet can be fun too. Try some romantic prints in heavier, home decorator fabrics.

The job will probably take you a weekend afternoon once you have your materials together. It's one small grace note that you can create yourself inexpensively, and it will make you feel as though your house is clean and well cared for from the inside out. It's a bit like buying lacy unmentionables –for your home. Others probably won't see your work, but you'll know it's there.

This is also a good way to start learning to use fabric, learning to serge, or polishing up your sewing skills. It may even give you the enthusiasm to move on to some of the big projects.

Special Notes on Sergers:

Sergers can be handy tools if you like to mix things up with different tablecloths, napkins, placemats, pillows, or curtains. They can cut and finish edges in a flash, and you can make a complete change of décor for your dining room in a couple of hours.

They've gotten a bad reputation for being difficult to thread, or expensive for the 'easy to use' brands. Sergers are easy, very easy to sew with. That's the beauty of them. They can create a finished edge without hemming or cutting, and they are fast! The problem is that they can be hard to thread.

Tips For Threading Sergers

Sergers will typically have four threads working in concert to create an enclosed web that keeps fabric edges from raveling. The threads have to be wound through the machine precisely, and it can sometimes be a tight fit for large or arthritic fingers. The good news is that there are inexpensive third party tools that can help, and once you know the drill with your serger, threading it isn't that big a deal.

Once you have the knack, make yourself a diagram, even if the machine includes its own. Keep your diagram with the machine for next time. If there is a particular spot you have trouble identifying, mark it with a small dot of nail polish so you'll have an easier time finding it next time.