Wednesday 19 June 2013

WIP - Fabric Basket for Toys

I am making a basket out of fabric for dressing up clothes for my children.
Basically the dressing up clothes are either all over the place or taking up valuable real estate in a drawer.  I want a fun basket for them so hopefully they can be tidied up more easily (not by me).
I have pirate fabric left over from a quilt I made for my son a couple of years ago.  I bought far too much and if I don't use it soon he will have grown out of it.  So I have gone for simple squares in diagonal lines.  I have 8 different cute, piratey fabrics.
To get the diagonals I first sewed strips together.  My strips were 3" wide.  I then cut strips which were 3" wide.  Lay them out and unpick one seam at a time per strip and, as shown above, unpick in a different place each time moving down one square each time.  Then swap the top squares with the bottom ones so the unpicked seams are one on each end of a row of squares.  See below.
As you can see this gives the diagonal stripes after starting from sewing strips together, which is quicker than sewing individual squares. 
I then ironed the strips on the back and alternated by ironing the seams up on one strip and down on the next.  This is so that the seams will nest together and you can get lined up corners which everyone wants, right?
In this picture I have shown what I mean by nested seams.  You can feel between your fingers if they are lined up nicely and getting this right leads to perfect corners.
So this is how far I have got.  I want to make it a round basket so I have made it 3 times longer than it is high.  I now have to quilt it, join it into a circle and put a base on it!
I want it to look a bit like a large one of these:
from here

I have fleece to line it with and I have thought of a way of reinforcing it as it will be large and I don't want it to fall over and be too floppy.  But other than that I am making it up as I go along.  I like the handles - I will do handles too!

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11 comments:

  1. Brilliant! I think this is MY kind of project.... Sadly my littlies have gotten all grown up on me, so I'll have to think of some other use for a big hold all like this...... :)

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  2. So bright and happy! I never thought to make this bigger! I just made a bunch from the tutorial on pink penguin, but BIG is too awesome. Thanks for the inspiration!

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  3. Your kiddos will love it! Good job mama!

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  4. What a great storage solution for all those dress up clothes! A neat variation of the scrappy trip block! Thanks so much for linking to Needle and Thread Thursday! Grab a button if you get a second!

    :) Kelly @ My Quilt Infatuation

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  5. What a cute little basket that will be. I love the pirate theme. Bigger will be nice. Can't wait to see what it looks like.

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  6. Your kids will love it, I definitely need one of those!

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  7. This is great! I bought something like this in a stiffened canvass at a homemaker store & I keep my knitting projects in it-a big one of these would be a wonderful knitting bag to sit beside the sofa :0)

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  8. Such a cheerful quilt!!! Love those pirates!

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  9. Would it get stiff enough if you just quilted it like crazy?

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  10. Love the fabrics! Looking forward to seeing it when it's done!

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  11. Love the Pirate fabric!

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