Pieces To Treasure: Baskets of Blue

If you follow my blog at all you know that recently I painted a new cabinet to put in my bathroom. You can see that here. To organize said cabinet I needed some baskets. I had one, but needed more for everything. I hunted and hunted through Hobby Lobby to find just the right one, but I couldn't see anything in the right color and size. I had to change my focus. I ended up looking for something in the right size without worrying about the color. I found 5 baskets...2 square that were red, 2 large rectangles with red gingham liners and 1 smaller rectangle with the same liner. I headed to the paint and fabric departments to fix the color and liners.

I picked up some brown and light blue spray paint. I wanted the brown to cover up the red and show through just a bit under the blue. Then I picked a pretty blue patterned material and purchased 1 1/2 yards based on my estimates and adding a bit for good measure.

Immediately I got to work on painting the baskets. It took at least 2 coats of brown to cover all the red in those baskets. I then applied 2 coats of blue inside and out of all 3 baskets. Since it was spray paint the brown didn't show through as well as I wanted, so I made a wash of brown chalk paint and brushed it on being careful to wipe it back off before it dried. You can see that in the top left picture. It's the same basket as the bottom middle picture with the wash applied. It gave it the dimension I wanted and also served to take away the sheen that the satin spray paint had. It looks more basket textured than with just plain spray paint.

For a while the baskets went in the cabinets like this. It took me a while to get to the liners for the white baskets. I had to create a pattern off the previous liner and play with the best way to sew it. I started by stitching the tie opening open. I folded the fabric to the wrong side in a V and just stitched along the sides to keep it open. I decided to sew the side panels to the base first with right sides together. I stopped my stitching about a 1/4 inch from the edge on both sides so when I stitched the sides I could match them up. I'm not sure that's the best way to explain it, but if you ever sew a cube like project you'll see what I mean. I sewed the sides next and stopped the stitching at the base where the sides and bottom were stitched together. If I went any further it would leave a small pucker in the corner. The previous liner had seams that were finished off with a surger. Since I don't own a surger I finished these seams with a zigzag stitch as well as the top hem. That's when my machine had a glitch which delayed my project again. After a tune up and a week later I got back to it and worked to finish them off.

One of the hardest parts was these little ties. They weren't hard to sew, but they were VERY hard to turn. It took almost as long to turn them as it did to sew the whole project. Once they were done I pinned them into the top fold of the hem about an inch in on each side of the tie opening. Then I stitched across them and continued across the top edge to secure the hem down.

Here's how the first one turned out. I decided the ties took WAY too much work and since the ties serve very little purpose I chose to go purchase ribbon.

The ribbon was SOOO much easier. The liner was looser than I wanted it to be, so if I ever redo the liners again I will make the top hem a casing and thread the ribbon through it so it can cinch the liner down around the basket.