Pinterest-Inspired Fabric Basket

Pin It I am in a sewing frenzy! And it's good...

Having scraps of canvass from the doggie hammock seat cover that I'm making (also Pinterest-inspired) and fabric from my damask window panels, I thought these would be perfect for a fabric basket.  This would be a cute storage for our doggie poop bags that we buy by the case.  And it would be coordinated with my window panels! We got them months ago and were still sitting in the original box they came in.  Not very attractive.  For the body, I mostly followed the instructions from Pink Penguin, with a few modifications.  I wanted the damask to also accent the top of the basket but didn't have enough fabric to actually make a lining out of it.  So I basically made a bias out of the damask fabric to close the top of the basket and used an old men's shirt as lining.  And because I wanted it to be a hanging basket, I changed the handle as shown below.  

I didn't have batting, so I used Pellon woven fusible interfacing, which was all I had.  But because the canvass I used was thick, the basket is able to hold its shape pretty well as you can see in the photo below.  As a value-added to the Pink Penguin tutorial, you know how Land's End canvass bags can stand sturdily on their own? I believe the trick is not to cut the corners of the box ends.  What I did was I folded them up and sewed the corners to the side seams. I did this both for the lining and the main basket.  As you can see, my basket stands up without a problem! So with a few changes, you can definitely use these techniques to make your own sturdy tote!  If I had a serger, I wouldn't even need the interfacing and the lining to make a tote.

Now once I hung the basket on the wall and actually put stuff in it, it was drooping.  But that was easily resolved with a cardboard at the bottom of the basket.

It feels awesome to actually create something from all these scrap materials! Why don't you try it?