How to Sew Fabric Basket Liners: Tutorial

Yesterday, I showed you my DIY Dinner Meal Kits. I used plastic baskets for the kits, but I wasn’t happy with just plain. So I made up some fabric baskets liners, with Velcro to attach my recipe cards to the front.

You could find lots of other uses for these fabric-lined baskets: in the bathroom, nappy-change station, craft room. Wherever you use a plastic basket, you could pretty them up with a liner.

With elastic around the edge to hold them on, they are also easy to take on and off to wash, or if you just want to change the fabric.

Here’s the full tutorial for how to sew fabric basket liners (previously shared at the CSI Project).

Materials
Plastic basket
Pretty fabric (depending on the size of your basket, a fat quarter should be plenty)
2” Bias tape
3/4” Elastic
Matching thread
Sewing machine
Scissors
Index Cards
Self-Adhesive Book Cover
Stick and Sew Velcro (hook and loop tape)

Procedure
Print out recipes on index cards, with title and ingredients on one side and procedure on the back of the cards.

If you’re messy in the kitchen like I am, cover the index cards with self-adhesive book cover (or use a laminator if you’re fancy!).

Place the sticky side of the Velcro on the back of the recipe cards.

Measure the size of your basket – mine were 8” x 5” (and 2.5” deep). Cut a piece of fabric sized as follows:
Width = 8” (basket width) + 2×2.5” (basket depth) + 3” (overhang and seam allowance) = 16”
Height = 5” (basket width) + 2×2.5” (basket depth) + 3” (overhang and seam allowance) = 13”

Round off the corners.

Pin bias tape around the edge of the fabric.

Sew bias tape into place, leaving a small opening for threading elastic. As you’ll be threading elastic through, it doesn’t matter if it’s not perfect.

Position the Sew-on Velcro on the short side of the fabric.

Sew the Velcro into place.

Thread your elastic through the opening:

Sew the ends of the elastic together.

Sew together the opening and even out the gathering of the elastic.

Place your pretty fabric cover over your basket and stick on the recipe card.

Fill with the pantry ingredients and store in your pantry.

The baskets turned out so pretty, my mind is ticking over for all the other places I could use some cute organization!

Where else would you use fabric-lined baskets?