Getting a Handle on Things

Somewhere in my sewing room are a dozen scrappy, wonky baskets. They had lived on my design wall for a time but then were 'safely' packed away to who knows where when I needed to use the wall. The big question is where.

I've been mulling over how to complete them and looking at lots of ideas for flowers and handles that could be used to fill them, but it needed to be a simplified design so that everything didn't become a jumbled mess. Then I found this wonky basket tutorial. It answered my questions about how to build the blocks (the basket bottom would align with the edge of the block) and I realized that I could piece the backgrounds, inserting the occasional soft floral instead of filling them with flowers. All I needed was to figure out how to sew the handles. Brilliant, but where were those pieced baskets?

Long story short, I have ripped my sewing room apart from top to bottom several times now and they continue to elude me so, before I went totally crazy, I sewed a few new ones.

The handles are made with bias strips so my surplus bindings will be perfect for this - I just have to trim them a little narrower. I started with green polka dots but from the get-go something just wasn't right. The tutorial suggests pressing the curve and then sewing down the handle by machine, doing the inside edge first. It just seemed to be fighting me so I opted to hand sew them thinking that I would have more control.

After ripping out my first attempt and switching to a lighter thread I was optimistic but by the time I finished the first edge I could just tell that the outside edge wasn't going to sit right no matter how well I pressed it. And then the penny dropped. This particular binding was cut on the straight of grain and not on the bias; little wonder that it didn't have the flexibility it needed. Time to rip things out again!

So, after all of that, my first basket is complete and a second handle is now prepped and ready to go. One block is rectangular and the other closer to square, but that's okay - I will build the top around the blocks that I end up with.

Time to get my blood pressure back to normal and sew down that handle. Hope you enjoy some hand sewing today too, but without all of the aggro.....M