A Pair of Fabric Baskets

For the recent Fabric Basket Swap on Craftster I made this pair of baskets--one for my partner, and one for myself!

My partner said she likes the line of fabrics called French General (by Moda), so I purchased a couple of fat-quarter bundles from an etsy store called Quilt Barn Idaho.  She also said she loves linen, so I knew I would use linen for the outside and some of the French General fabric for the inside.  When the fabrics arrived, I was thrilled to discover that one of them had small panels with bird pictures on them--they were perfect for an accent on the outside of the baskets!  Hooray for serendipity!

The tricky part was sewing the bird panels and other embellishments onto the fabric BEFORE assembling the basket--I had to be very precise with the placement of everything.  Here's an in-progress shot:

I used this tutorial for this pair.

Usually I let the fabric do all the "work" of making the object look interesting, but this time I had so much fun arranging the different elements of detail on the outside.  It was a wonderful learning experience for me.

I hope this will inspire you to try something similar, and if you do, I'd love to hear about it!

I want to remind you that starting this coming Saturday, March 17th, I will begin my humongous "Seven Days of Giveaways"!!  On Thursday I will post pictures of all the loot I will be giving away, so be sure to check it out!