"Somebody" is using black and red for her new apartment. I decided to make kitchen towels, but my Savory Swirls designs didn't look good in black and red. I found these Asian embroidery designs, and I love, love, love how the towels came out. Rather than paper wrapping, I made a fabric basket from some Asian inspired yardage I had on hand.
I bought a bolt of Huck toweling a while back at Joann's, prewashed the whole thing, ironed it, and put it back on the cardboard. So nice to have it in the house when I want it! These designs are from
The Embroidery Library. I posted about making the Huck towels before. You can see the dimensions I use
here.
The fabric basket idea was from my sewing muse. Yes, I have a sewing muse. You have to get one! I've adopted Sandra from
Sandra Sews. She's always using techniques, fabrics, patterns, and "things" that encourage me to kick my sewing up a notch. Sandra made some small fabric baskets recently. You can take a look
here and get the link for the free pattern. (Free is always great!) I doubled the size of the pattern and used solid pieces of fabric instead of piecing squares. My main pieces were 24x18 1/2. The handles were double the size of the original pattern as well.
With the batting, my bag is a bit wobbly which doesn't matter if the basket is full. Next time, I will probably use a mid to heavy interfacing instead of batting, or, maybe, with the batting.
Back to my muse. I would never have tried the twin needles if I hadn't seen how nice that perfect double line looked on Sandra's projects with batting. I decided to try it on this fabric basket. Sandra said it was easy and gave me a few tips. I watched a few YouTube videos, too, to get up my courage.
Turns out, it IS easy! Doesn't that look nice? I might try doing more of this on the next basket. That may well provide enough stability so that I won't need to the interfacing. I shall let you all know!
I put in some red dish clothes--store-bought. I CANNOT find terry fabric at the fabric stores that I like. I make hair towels with Joann's terry cloth, which is okay, but it really "wrinkles" up with one use. It doesn't look pretty hanging. It works great, though.
Should the recipient see this before the gift arrives, there will still be a surprise. There is something special
under those towels!