Sewing Room Sunday: Storage Basket Makeover

View of sewing cottage from back door

Since I usually spend a lot of my weekend in my sewing room (cottage, really, out in the backyard), it makes sense for my Sunday night posts to be about what's going on up there. I say "up there" because it's up the hill a bit.

My friend and sewing student, Allison, thought you'd like to see how I dressed up my plain white plastic storage baskets to blend in with my sewing room decor. We had these containers left over when we bought new wicker ones for our bathroom linen closet. They fit nicely on my bookshelves, so I used them plain for awhile, to hold my smaller scraps. But the white really stuck out and bored me. So one night I cut some 2.5" strips from a fabric I had in two different colorways. Then I calculated the strip length required to thread one continuous strip through all three rows of holes. I sewed enough strips together, end to end, for each basket, alternating colors. I angled the seams (out of habit) like you would for quilt binding (instructions here from Heather Bailey's website), but I think a straight seam would've worked just fine.

Inside view of scrap basket

After threading the strip through (top to bottom), making sure the outside corners looked neat, I tied the beginning and end together inside the basket. Not an extremely neat finish, but good enough for the inside of a scrap basket. If you come up with a better idea, please comment! 

There's no before picture, but I think they look pretty good now! I did a larger-size basket (also retired from service in my bathroom) for my daughter's under-sink cabinet some of the colorful organdy ribbons I'd saved from gifts and packaging. These projects used only items we had on hand. I love finding new uses for items we already own!