Fabric Basket – A Tutorial…

A few months ago I applied and was accepted to Kym’s Fabric Fascination Tutorial Exchange program. The exchange was for me to design and share a tutorial with half a yard of fabric that I would be sent.
So this is my contribution…

Kym sent me this absolutely beautiful Laurie Wishrun fabric…

Laurie is one of my favourite designers and I completely adore this fabric, but it was actually harder than I thought it would be to think of a tutorial this time for some reason…

So in typical Kat style I cheated and opened up the topic on my blog for suggestions from readers of what to make. In other words asked you to do much of the hard work for me 😉
I had some great suggestions but one in particular totally gave me a “why didn’t I think of that, that’s SUCH a great idea moment” and I knew I didn’t need to look any further.

So thanks so much to Glenda from Florida for her wonderful suggestion of an Easter basket.
I could not think of a more perfect use for adorable little bunny fabric, so Glenda, you are a genius and thank you for your suggestion 🙂

Anyway lets get started…
Today I’m going to show you how to make this gorgeous fabric Easter Basket…

Perfect for little ones to carry around for their Easter egg hunt, but also useful as a storage basket for many other purposes. The handle could easily be changed around to suit many other styles (e.g. a handle on each side)…

Before you begin making this project, please read through all the instructions and make yourself familiar with the steps involved.

I have kept my needle in the middle of my presser foot and used the side of my foot as a guide for the seam allowance, unless otherwise noted.

These instructions are designed for use with a rotary cutter & cutting mat. However, you can make your own amendments and make it without these if you would like to.

Ingredients list:

Main basket:

**  Exterior fabric: Two – 12 inch wide by 9.5 inch tall pieces. Just make sure that if you are using a directional print that the print faces the correct way. (Just FYI I used just under a FQ for the exterior and again for the interior if that gives you a guide of how big a piece you’ll need).

**  Lining fabric: Two – 12 inch wide by 9.5 inch tall pieces

**  Interfacing: Two – 12 inch wide by 9.5 inch tall pieces of the stiffest interfacing you have available. You can also use iron on fleece/pellon or quilt batting, your basket just won’t be as firm standing.

Handle:

**  Exterior fabric: Two – 3 inch wide by 9 inch tall pieces
(make sure if you have a directional print that you cut your pieces with the directional print going in the correct direction)

**  Lining fabric:  Two – 3 inch wide by 9 inch tall pieces

**  Interfacing:  Two – 3 inch wide by 9 inch tall pieces of the stiffest interfacing you have available.

Note: If your interfacing is not very stiff then I would recommend using double the amount specified above. Because I only used 1 layer and I found that my handle was a bit too floppy. Next time I would either use stiffer interfacing or use 2 layers.

Step 1: Preparing our outer bag…

Take your 2 pieces of exterior fabric and your 2 pieces of main basket interfacing and lay them on your table in the following order, with the long edges at the top & bottom:
Interfacing
Exterior fabric right side up
Exterior fabric right side down
Interfacing

Note: If using a directional print like myself then make sure your print is facing towards the top edge for both pieces. Look at my picture if you are unsure…

Make sure that all of your edges and corners are nicely matched up and pin all four layers together around the edges.

Now we are going to sew down the sides and bottom of our bag, but leaving the top open…

Place the top right hand side of your bag under your presser foot, with the edge of your fabric lined up with the edge of your presser foot …

Sew down that entire side, but stop when you get to the same distance to the bottom than you are from the side…

Place your needle down
lift your presser foot up
pivot your fabric 90 degrees
line up the edge of your fabric with the edge of your presser foot again
And sew down until you are almost at the bottom again.

Repeat until you have sewn together the two sides and the bottom, but leave the top open at this stage.

We are now going to make our boxed corners…

Take the exterior part of your bag and pinch the right hand corner so that your side seam and the seam at the bottom match up like in my photo…

It can look a bit deceptive, like they are lined up well when they actually aren’t, from the outside. So it’s good to stand up the bag and check that they match up from the inside at this point:

Once you have got your side seam perfectly matched up with the seam at the bottom then flatten the corner nicely and pin.
Using your ruler, line one of the lines up on your ruler with the tip of your triangle (see where I have my finger below) and measure 2 inches from the tip, making sure that the line on your ruler lines up nice and straight with the seam of stitching…

Once you have it all lined up nice and straight then draw a line across. I just use ordinary biro but you can feel free to use something more fancy if you desire 😉

Pin on either side of the line so that it now looks like this…

And sew directly along that line you have just drawn. Make sure that you reverse to secure your stitches well at the beginning and end of your sew line in this step.

Once you have sewn your line you can trim your seam to 1/4 inch

Repeat for the other side, so that you have boxed both of the corners of your outer fabric and place it to one side for now.

Step 2: Preparing our lining…

Take your two pieces of lining and place them right sides together with the long edges at the top & bottom.
Using 2 pins, pin the bottom 1/3 & 2/3s of the way along like my photo:

We now want to sew along the sides & bottom of the lining, just as we did for our outer bag in step 1, BUT this time we need to leave the area in the middle of the pins unsewn like so…

Make sure you reverse your stitches well to secure them at the beginning and ends of your sew lines, particularly on either side of the pins, as this hole will later become our turning hole.

Remove your pins and box the sides of your lining in exactly the same fashion as we boxed the outer bag.

Step 3: Preparing the handle:

Before we start sewing our handle pieces together, we are first going to trim them slightly so that they have a nice taper at the top…

Take a piece of your outer fabric and lay it with the short side at the top and the print direction going up.
Take your tailor’s chalk, or “fancy” erasable marker, or *ahem* your normal pen like mine and make a small mark at the top, 1/2 inch in from each side…

Now  line your ruler vertically like my picture:

Trim off the excess fabric to the right of your ruler
Repeat for the other side.

Repeat for all the other pieces of your handle, again making sure that you trim all your pieces with the directional print facing the top.

Once we have trimmed all of our interfacing & handle fabric to size we can start to sew them together.

Place your handle pieces in this order, with the narrowest piece at the top…
Interfacing

Exterior fabric right side up
Exterior fabric right side down
Interfacing

Sew across the top and open out your pieces like so:

Place the lining pieces of your handle right sides together and also sew across the top.

Then open out your lining pieces, place right side down on your exterior pieces with all of the edges matching nicely and pin down the sides…

Make sure that you line up the seams exactly on top of each other. I would recommend putting a pin directly over the seams to keep them matched while you sew.

Sew down each side of the handle but leave the top & the bottom open

We can now turn our handle in the right way.
I put a safety pin in one end and push it down the middle between the two layers, gently pulling the fabric through on itself…
Here you can see it has just popped out the other side:

Once you have pulled it all through, finger press it all in place and give it a good iron flat.

Top stitch along each side of your handle about 1/8th of an inch from the edge:

Ok, we are now ready to assemble our bag:

Step 4: Putting it all together…

At this stage you need to decide how you’d like your handle to be. I put mine so that it went from front to back and I could therefore always see the pretty fabric. You could also choose to have it go from side to side.
If you decide to put yours from side to side then you can ignore the next step about finding the centre, and simply use the side seams as your markings…

If, like me, you would like your handle to go from front to back, then take your outer bag and fold the sides in half to find the middle mark. Finger press it to make a little mark. This is where we need to pin our handle.

Match up the middle of your handle with the middle of your bag and pin your handle so that the outer sides are together and the raw edge edges are matched.
The handle should essentially be upside down at this point…

Once you have both sides pinned we need to baste them onto our exterior.
Sew the handle to the exterior as close to the edge as possible.

Now we can add our lining:
Turn your lining so that it is now right side out
Place it inside your bag outer with the side seams matched, and pin around the top

Sew around the top of your bag.
Make sure that you have the arm of your sewing machine in the middle of the bag like my photo, so that you don’t accidentally sew shut the entire bag:

Make sure you reverse to secure your stitches at the beginning & end of your stitching.

Yay we can now turn our bag!
Gently turn your bag through the opening that you left in the lining

Once you have it pulled out we need to pull the lining all the way out and iron neatly the seam at the bottom so the raw edges are all tucked inside

You can either hand ladder stitch this opening closed, or carefully sew 1/8th inch along the edge of the fabric by machine like me…

Obviously I only used white to provide contrast so you could see what I mean, not because I was too lazy to change to a more suitable colour 😉 ha – of course!

You can now poke the lining back into your bag
Iron around the top edge of the bag so that the lining stays put and it all sits nicely.

Then you want to top stitch about 1/8th of an inch around the top of the bag:
(again taking care not to stitch it closed 😉 )

Embellish as desired and there you have it, one beautiful Easter (or otherwise) fabric basket…

See what I mean about my handle being a bit floppy? Ooops….

Perfect for storing all your treasures in 🙂

As always I’d love to see your projects if you make one.

Enjoy

(PS don’t forget to enter my pattern giveaway if you haven’t already. You have until Friday 9th March at 8pm WAST)
Linking up with Creative Spaces.