Another Basket Liner Redo

I have another friend who just had a baby and I wanted to do a gift basket for her also. The last basket I created was rectangular, so I decided to go for a challenge and found a round basket that needed a liner! What do you think?

Because this basket has kind of a lip on the outside, I decided to use a little elastic to keep the liner around the basket. Can you see the lip that I'm talking about?

I started by tracing the bottom of the basket on some tissue paper. Cut out the circle, and you'll have a pattern for the bottom of your basket. Something like this.

Cut one out of your material. I'm using a printed snuggle flannel, by the way. It was a remnant from Joann's that was given to me by the lady who gave me my sewing machine.

Also, the first way I did this was a fail. But first, I'll show you how I ended up doing it. The circumference of the basket was about 47 inches. I also measured the height of the basket - from the bottom up to the underside of the lip of the basket. Mine ended up being around 9 inches. So I cut two pieces that were about 11 inches tall and about 30 inches wide. I debated on whether I should have that much in the width of the material, but after you see my mistake, you'll understand why I went with that much material. I also really quite liked the finished product. So in the end, I'm glad I stuck with the 30 inch (60 inches total) width.

Pin the two pieces (the 11"x30") with right sides together and sew up the short sides so that when you open it, it makes a circle.

This is the long piece folded up

After you've sewn the sides together, you'll want to make a casing for the elastic on one of the long sides. I was working with pretty small elastic - 1/4", I think. Unless you have a patterned material that needs to be one way, it doesn't really matter which side you put the casing on. Make sure to leave an opening so that you can put the elastic in later. The side with the casing will be the top of the liner.

At this point, don't put the elastic in yet. Instead, you'll need to gather the bottom of the long pieces so that it will fit your bottom circle. I used my sewing machine to make the gathering stitch. Pin the bottom circle and the gathered side together.

Sew these two pieces together carefully being sure not to catch any extra of the bottom or side pieces in your stitching. I may or may not have accidentally done that.

Once those two pieces are sewn together, you can put the elastic into the casing on the top. I know there are lots of ways to do this, but I just took a safety pin and attached it to one end of the elastic and started pulling it through the casing. That's the way I learned years ago in a Home Ec class! After it's through, sew the ends of the elastic together then finish the casing.

To keep the elastic from rolling, I sewed the elastic down in a few places after it was in the casing. I picked about 4 or 5 places and just did a simple straight stitch across the width of the elastic and casing.

Put it in your basket and admire your hard work!

Now, what NOT to do...

I had the brilliant idea of trying to taper the liner so it was more fitted to the basket. Apparently I didn't have the right equation (I've been watching Numbers on Netflix) because it did NOT fit.

Luckily I tested it out before I attached the bottom! I'm not sure if I needed to add more height or width to the material or if I just shouldn't have tapered it quite so much. I don't know where my math went wrong, but that's why I decided that more was better for the second try. So, this is a perfect example of trying things out as you work to make sure that things fit properly. I would have been so upset and I would have had to start completely over if I hadn't checked.

I'll be using this basket for another baby gift, so check back and see how it turns out. I'll also be using this same material to cute-ify a wipes case, so check back for that tutorial too!