Strippy Basket Tutorial

Sometimes it is fun to make a small, fast, and easy project like this Scrappy Strippy Fabric Basket and this tutorial will make you want to make all kinds of cute fabric baskets. These would make great gifts!

Grab a charm pack of your favorite quilt fabric collection or just use some of your stash to make this fun quilt project.

Strippy Basket Tutorial

I used a charm square package of Somerset that I had leftover from my Piano Keys Table Runner project so I cut the 5-inch squares in half and then sewed them back together. We quilters are crazy people….according to Builder Bob.

Charm Squares – 5 inch squares of fabric

• Cut your squares in half – they will be 2.5 x 5 inches
• Sew 9 of them together for a row
• Do this 3 times
• Add a 1.5 inch strip of a neutral fabric between each row (see note below)

Do you like to cut up fabric and then sew it back together? I think many of you do because one of my most popular posts is about that. I made a tote bag using a similar method.

Add a fusible fleece, I used Pellon 987F Fusible Fleece and quilt your new fabric.

I just did some organic free-motion straight stitching on my fabric and then did a free motion stipple quilting on the inside lining piece.

I thought you might like to see a closer photo of the organic free motion stitching I did on my vintage 15-91 Singer sewing machine. I used a darning foot, not a walking foot to do it.

It looks like it is curved but it isn’t, I had the quilted fabric at an angle to show the quilting better.

I am including the photos of the steps for making my scrappy strippy basket.  I made the 18-inch basket but I think I would have liked it better if I hadn’t added the 1.5-inch strips of fabric. I could have just added another row of the 2.5 x 9-inch pieces.

There is one more thing that I goofed up on. I should have stay stitched the top of each piece before I sewed them together.

What is stay stitching?It is a single line of stitching that will stabilize your fabric and prevent it from stretching.

You can see in the photo that it is pretty obvious that I stretched the top of the basket when I sewed the lining to the outside. I also think I stretched it more when I did my topstitching.

I went ahead and sewed up the sides as I did in my Fabric Boxes tutorial. That helped a little bit.

Don’t forget to read about the first strippy basket I made and get the link to the free pattern. 

Take look at my Batik Strippy Baskets, and get the link to the free pattern.

The baskets turned out nice and I also made a set of coasters with the leftovers. This would make a beautiful Mother’s Day gift!

_{Please note that this post contains affiliate links, which means I’ll earn a small commission if you purchase through my link at no extra cost to you. Please see the full disclosure here. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.}