Hiding the not-so-pretty

So! You have a laundry basket but no lid. That's not so pretty. Especially if it's in your bedroom and in full view when you enter the room. What to do, what to do?

Get sewing, of course!

This is a (bad) image of the basket we use for laundry in our house. It's actaully a 'fireside basket'; we don't have fireplaces in our house but we do have laundry.

So this is it, and it comes without a lid, as the idea is that the logs stick jauntily out of the top, which is nice with logs but not so nice with underwear.

So I gathered my materials.

The top of the basket was approx 12" square so I worked on a pattern that was approx 13" square plus a 2 1/2" lip around the side with a handle in the centre and place for the basket handles to poke through. it was quilted lightly to give it structure.

The rough measurements were:

10 strips of 2" (accidental cutting - was aiming for 2 1/2") x 20" (to allow for further slicing for checquer board effect), four strips of 3" x 14", 1 strip of 4" x 6" (handle), lining material and light wadding both cut in one piece of 14" x 14"and 4 strips of 3" x 14". Also out of the wadding, cut one piece 1 1/2" x 6". Also used was spray baste, complimentary thread and coffee (for me).

First, you sew your strips together. There was a request for 'lots of muschrooms' in this one so there were lots of mushrooms.

Once sewn, close out the edge seams bargello style and slice in 2" strips.

Arrange the strips in a pleasing manner (to you - you're the one looking at this day in, day out - please yourself entirely here).

I should note that when I sewed my strips together into a chequer board, the mushrooms didn't quite make it from corner to corner so I rejigged it slightly and cut one more mushroom square to make it 9x9, not 10x8.

Spray baste to the wadding.

Next I tackled the edge pieces. Laying them onto the wadding - a light fleece - and basting with the spray, I cut each one out somewhat roughly.

This picture shows the top, the four edge piece and the handle all basted to the fleece wadding.

The handle piece I folded lengthways in four to a width of 1 1/2" and basted a 1 1/2" piece of wadding inside the fold.

I then lightly quilted both the side pieces and the handle with long parallel lines and a long stitch length. i did not use a walking foot as this was thin batting and there were only two layers.

The top I quilted in parallel lines going diagonally corner-corner through each square. I kept it one direction and did not do criss-cross.

I then squared up all the pieces on the cutting board, joined the sies to the top leaving gaps for the handles and tested it on the basket. So far so good.

Now I pieced the lining together and fitted it to the inside of the top. They were sewn together right sides together, leaving the gaps for the handles, and then turned inside out.

Once right-side out, the gaps for the handles were top stitched as were the edges and corners to give more shape and stability, the handle was sewn securely to the middle of the top, et voilà! No more knickers on view but plenty of mushrooms!