Reunited!

After being kept apart so long I finally have access to my sewing machine and time to use it.  So what is the first thing I do?  Make laundry baskets.  My mother was kind enough to give me a frame used to hold fabric laundry baskets, more laundry slings really, that she only had one of the sling/baskets for.  It was in her way and she wanted to get rid of it.  Having limited room in my bedroom I volunteered to make a home for it knowing I would have to make two more sling/baskets for it to use it effectively.  Conveniently, mom had also given me an old fitted sheet she had laying around.  The tag identifies it as a "Springs" queen fitted sheet made of 50% cotton/50% polyester.  I'm always in the market for free sources of fabric.  It had a pretty leaf print in a few colors.

It doesn't match at all the fabric of the sling/basket it came with, but free is free.  Bring a fitted sheet it was a little difficult to work with.  I started out seam ripping the corner seams so it would lay somewhat flat for measuring.  I used a fabric tape measure to get measurements from the existing sling/basket, adding 1/4" for a seam allowance.  The cutting went okay.  I wasn't too exact for something like this.  Close enough was good enough for me.  It was the pinning that made me want to scream.  I ended up with one long piece for the sling piece and two half-ovals for the sides for each sling/basket.  One end of the sling had to be hemmed (I re-used the serged edge from the sheet to save time) as well as the flat edge of each half-oval.  Then the sides of the slings had to be pinned to the half ovals, being careful to match centers so the sling/baskets would sit evenly.  The insides looked like this (after sewing because I forgot to take a picture while pinned.

This fabric had something weird going on.  I'm not sure what was used to put the nice leaf and random white spatters pattern on the fabric, but it made it a bear to pin through.  I stabbed myself every couple of seconds it seemed like because of the effort I had to use to get the pins through.  Sewing around those pronounced curves was a breeze in comparison.  Lots of pinning and sewing later I had two new sling/baskets.  The original sling/basket had the channel that went over the frame sewn so the only way to get it off would be to take the frame apart.  I put that one on the bottom.  These new ones are going higher and I might want to take them down to get the laundry out.  I had planned to add velcro, but I don't seem to have any.  So they were safety-pinned instead, three on each side.  The finished product:

Nothing earth shattering, but definitely useful in my limited space.  And an easy fix to make this product useful again where it might otherwise have gotten junked.  Sewing can definitely make your life easier if you have some imagination.