One Piece at a Time

Beautiful Baskets Part 2

Now that you have you basket all beautifully woven It’s time to add the handle and top and bottom. All these pieces are made from the two ½” bias strips I made from the basket material.

To make the bottom I cut a strip long enough to cover all the bottom vertical pieces PLUS enough to tuck in ¼” on each side. I then placed these over strips and glued them down.

To make the handle I used one long ½ bias strip and glued it along the line I traced from the pattern. Since this strip is thick I did two separate lines of glue to secure it. Once it was glued I trimmed the excess fabric from the handle.

The next step was to use the last piece of ½” bias stem to cover the tops of the basket’s vertical strips.

To secure the basket, I first appliquéd the basket sides down along the end vertical pieces. I slip stitched the outside and the inside of these end pieces.

The bottom of the basket can then be appliquéd down.

For the top, I first appliquéd the handle then the basket top.

I found that this was secure enough to hold it while I appliquéd the other flowers on. The strips move around a little but nothing that would cause any problems since they are packed in fairly tight. If you find the strips moving too much while you do any other appliqué you might want to sew more of the strips down.

Check back tomorrow for a chance to win some Perfect Stems from Karen Kay Buckley!

Beautiful Baskets Part 1

Several years ago I picked up a pattern from a local Colorado quilt pattern company called Curiosity. If you want to see some really lovely patterns check them out, as far as I can tell they are still in business. They had the most beautiful appliqué patterns, many of them done with baskets. They have some nice directions for weaving fabric baskets that can be found here. I was really afraid to try this until a few weeks ago because I thought it would be hard. Boy was I wrong. It’s very simple and really really fun. This method for baskets can be adapted to just about any basket you find on an appliqué pattern.

For the basket in my Miss Betty pattern I used ½ yard of fabric. From this I cut and made 10 bias stems, ¼” wide and two bias stems ½” wide. After making these I traced JUST the pattern for the basket onto my background fabric.

Next, place your background onto some suitable pinning surface. Start at one side of the basket drawing and pin a strip along the edge.

 Continue pinning at regular intervals until you have all the vertical strips done.

Now using the remaining strips and starting at the bottom, weave a strip in and out of the vertical stems as shown. Weave each strip in the opposite way as the previous strip to get that basket look.

After you have done a few of these, tuck the strips down so that they are packed fairly tight.

When you have woven most of the horizontal strips, cut the ends so they can be easily tucked under the side vertical strip.

Using the fabric glue of choice, secure these ends. Repeat on the other side.

As you can see here, I wove most of the basket and glue basted it. I then did the final horizontal strips and secured these. Finally, when all the weaving was done, I secured the vertical strips with some fabric glue. I didn’t bother to tuck these since they will be covered with the basket top and bottom.

Come back tomorrow to see how it was all finished!