Tutorial: Making a Fabric Basket Lining

When I was a kid we always got those plastic Easter baskets, usually ready made or if not, just stuffed with random stuff. As a kid, they were fantastic. As a parent, I can't bring myself to purchase a cheap (overpriced) plastic basket every.single.year. So after I bought my Pumpkin's Easter basket for her first Easter, I decided we'd be re-using it. Now that our little Junebug has joined our family I needed to buy a second basket. I didn't have a lot of time to shop around, so I bought the first one that I *sort of* liked. Well, it's not nearly as cute as my Pumpkin's basket, so I needed to dress it up a bit. Since this is the first thing I've made in a while without a tutorial from someone else, I decided it was time for a tutorial of my own!

1) measure the inside diameter for the bottom of your liner. This is just to give you an idea of how much fabric you're going to need, because unless you have a big enough circle cutter you'll probably just end  up tracing the bottom to cut the fabric, like I did.

2) Measure from each end of the handle to find how long your inside pieces of fabric need to be.

3) Measure the height of your basket to know how wide your fabric pieces need to be. Keep in mind if you want it to fold over like mine, you'll need to include that in your measurements.

Add 1/2" to your measurements from steps 2 and 3... so if you measured 15.5" x 7.5" like I did, you'd cut rectangles that are 16" x 8".

4) You should end up with 3 pieces of fabric: a square from which you will cut your circle and two rectangles for your inner sides.

5) This is where I got bummed, my circle cutter wasn't big enough to cut the perfect circle I needed so I had to go old school. Darn it! So, here's where you'd trace your basket. This actually works out quite nicely, because the outer edge of the basket will measure slightly larger, thus giving you your seam allowance. After tracing your circle, cut it out.

6) Press the edges 1/4" in on 3 sides of your rectangular pieces. Yes, just 3 sides.

7) Pin the unpressed (bottom) side of your rectangular piece to half of the circle (right sides together). It should look something like this. Pardon the pinning, I get overzealous anytime I'm not pinning straight, like fabrics together!

8) After sewing this is what it should look like:

 

9) Repeat step 7 and it should look like this:

10) Sorry I don't have a picture for this one but now you're going to double check the inside height of your basket and determine where you want your inside pieces to split to allow room for your handle. You saw at the beginning of this post that my basket was roughly 5 1/2" tall, so I chose to sew 4" together and leave the rest open at the top.

11) Now, on your previously pressed corners of your rectangular pieces you're going to created tapered edges. This allows some space for your handle on the finished product. Simply fold, at an angle, from the corner to where you stopped sewing and press again. You'll also press 1/4" of the top side down, to give you the finished look without any raw edges. Beginning in the middle of the "V" you see below, stitch from one opening to the other side. Repeat on the other rectangle/inside piece.

12) Slip it into your basket and voila! You're done. I whipped this out in under an hour so I'm sure anyone could do this quickly =)