A-tisket, A-tasket, A gnomish basket!

 A-tisket, A-tasket, A gnomish basket! New Years always bring about new adventures. One of the adventures I’m taking is facilitating a penpal event for Makers Gonna Make. Our plan is to provide 3 gifts for our penpal. These gifts need to relate to our makes and are reasonably mailable. My penpal is my good friend Heather Day. She’s local, but I still want to mail it. Who doesn’t love happy mail?

Heather and I make things together frequently, so I needed to think of something extra special. Off to Pinterest I went. There were so many ideas that I had to bookmark several. This month I was on limited time and needed to find a quicker make. I came across this super cute fabric box. Something new to me, and super cute! Heather had mentioned her love of all things gnome, and I had some super cute gnome fabric. I followed the links until I got to the original post on Seaside Stitches by Tina Craig. Just a fellow maker, making stuff and sharing her make.

My first one came with some learning curves. I used some extra batting I had laying around, and some buttons from my button stash. The gnome fabric and dot fabric was something I recently rediscovered in my stash. I love the yellow of the gnome fabric. I followed the directions and really liked how the box turned out. I didn’t feel there was enough gnome visible for my friend though. She needed a bit more gnome. I also thought the box was a little limp.

The next day I cut out the materials again, but this time I used fusible fleece on the back of both fabrics. I also used the red as the outside fabric and the gnomes on the inside of the box. This is where a happy little accident happened. I accidentally stitched the corners so that the red would be the inside instead of the outside. As I was about to pop the stitches, I folded them over on the outside of the box, then I folded over the top corner. It was love at first sight. I loved the corner folds on the outside of the box. The stitches stayed and I finished off the basket this way.

Excitedly I took version 2.0 down to Nathan, and he agreed. My changes made a huge difference. Then he decided that 2.0 needed a tweek. What if the outside fold overs all went the same direction. Wouldn’t you know, it looks cute that way too. And you don’t lose stability. I guess this is version 2.5.

Things I learned, I love the use of fusible fleece instead of batting. I love the fold on the outside, it makes it more basket-like. I love the quilting as Tina suggested because it turns out more diamond like in the end. Gives the whole box a bit of texture. Whatever fabric you want to see more of, make this your “inside” fabric. It is more visible than the fabric that actually ends up on the outside. It’s the foldovers, they show up a lot. Yes, it takes about an hour if you focus on it. I will definitely be making more of these.