This study aims to develop a natural biopolymer based nanofabric as an oral drug carrier to deliver a model hydrophobic drug (piperine) in a sustained and controlled manner over prolonged time. For that, we electrospun gelatin nanofabric mesh followed by crosslinking using saturated vapor of glutaraldehyde (GTA) for 8 mins to improve the water resistive properties. Later, we investigated the effect of different crosslinking strategies and found that layer-by-layer crosslinking not only provides an improved structural integrity, thermal and chemical stability of drug but also yields a tight control over sustained drug release up to 8 h. © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.