Reversible Storage Basket Tutorial

Reversible Storage Fabric Basket with Handles. Free Sewing Tutorial and Pattern.

Finished Size: 7.5” x 10” x 5.5” tall.

Requirements:

We made our basket wide enough and tall enough to hold DVDs, if you would like to make a different size go to the end of this tutorial for instructions on how to work out how much fabric you need.

18” x 10” x2 for external fabric
18” x 10” x 2 for internal fabric
18” x 10” x 2 interfacing – as stiff as you like, we used fusible fleece in this example, for a stiffer finish try flexi firm.

9” x 2 ribbon or webbing for handles

Method:

Iron your interfacing onto the wrong side of the external fabric pieces.

Place your external pieces together, right sides facing each other, and sew around the left, right and bottom edges. Snip the excess fabric off the bottom corners.

Pinch the bottom corner of the basket so that the fabric moves and the side and bottom seams lie on top of each other, if you are not sure if you have done this correctly, look inside and check that the seams are ontop of each other (orange line in image 2).  Pin the fabrics together.

Place your ruler on top of new shape, so that the seam runs inline with marks on the rule (see red line on image below).   Now move the ruler up and down this seam, until you have 3.75” on each side of the red line (if you don’t get even amounts on both sides of the line, then you need to line the seams up again).

Draw a line across, sew your seam along this line and then cut off the excess fabric.

Repeat on the other side. You will now have a basket shape.

Repeat these steps with the internal fabric pieces (you will not need to add interfacing to these pieces).

Place one bag inside the other one, so that you can check your progress, and determine where you want the handles to go. We used the seam on the side to guide us, leaving 1” between each handle and the seam.  Pin the handles to the external fabric only (do not pin through the internal fabric).  Take the external basket off the internal basket and tack the handles into place with a seam allowance slightly smaller than ¼”.

Turn both baskets inside out, and place the internal basket inside the external basket (the right sides of the baskets will now be facing each other).  Make sure they are snug and that the handles are pointing down.  Pin the fabrics together around the top, taking care to line up the seams on the sides. Sew the two baskets together, leaving a gap along one of the longer edges of a few inches for turning out (shown in yellow on the image below), and making sure the seam is lower than the seam you made when attaching the handles. 

Turn the basket out through the gap.

Fold the raw edges (left by the turning gap) inwards, it is a good idea to iron the fabric into place, then sew a top seam around the whole basket, this will strengthen the shape and secure the fabric across the turning gap.

Fill up your basket!

 

Working out fabric requirements for your basket

Internal, external fabric and interfacing x2 pieces of each measuring:
Length = Height + ½ depth + ½”
Width = Width + depth + ½”
When you sew the box corners the corners you cut off will measure 1/2 the finished depth
(for example: in this project the depth of the basket is 7.5”, so the measurement across each corner is 3.75”).