Shelves, cupboards, and drawers can only store so much around a house. Homes tend to have plenty of things that don’t store well in them. For laundry, extra pillows, blankets and throws, toys, knitting, scarves, gloves and caps, towels and washcloths, makeup, small electronic gadgets, stationery, mail, and plenty of other things around the house, baskets are lifesavers.
While you can certainly go shopping for baskets, a little time and creativity are all you need to make your own right at home. You’ll end up with beautiful results that people just won’t stop talking about.
1. A kitchen vegetable basket
If you’re handy with carpentry tools, only a little work with a piece of cedar wood and wire mesh can net you a basket that you can use for vegetables or anything else. All you need is a 16 inch x 16 inch sheet of half-inch wire mesh, a two-foot length of three-quarter-inch dowel and a 3 foot x 6 inch plank of 1-inch-thick cedar wood.
To construct your basket, cut two 12-inch semicircles out of the wood, space them 16 inches apart, wrap the wire mesh around the semicircular bottoms and staple it in place. Then, you can construct a handle with sections of dowel and nails. That’s all there is to it.
2. Make a colorful fabric toy basket
A large basket to hold the toys that your kids leave around can be a very convenient thing to have. If you have scraps of fabric leftover from other projects, you can use them here. The plan is to cut out 2-inch squares of fabric of different patterns and to sew them together to form a sheet.
For the body of the basket, simply wrap the patchwork sheet that you’ve made around to make a hollow cylinder. For the base, make another sheet and up the bottom.
3. A sisal rope fruit basket
A 100-foot length of quarter-inch sisal rope, a glue gun, and a large bowl are all you need to make a rope fruit basket with. The idea is to simply dress up the bowl by wrapping rope around it. The rope sticks in place with glue from the glue gun. If your bowl doesn’t have handles, you can fashion the rope into the handles you need.
4. A fabric piping basket
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Fabric piping can take time and patience to make. The results, though, are always worth it. To make piping, you need to first buy a supply of cord cotton filler (brands like Wrights are popular). Then, you need fabric to wrap the filler cord. You can either use leftover fabric that you cut into long strips or buy a jelly roll or a honeybun (colorful fabric rolls by brands such as Moda or Andover).
Wrap the fabric around the cord and sew it in place. You’ll have bright, colorful piping in no time. Then you’ll need to build your basket by coiling the piping cord that you’ve created layer by layer in the shape of a basket, taking the time to sew every layer in place.
5. A newspaper basket
If you love the idea of learning a new skill, you could learn simple basket weaving — with newspaper as your raw material. To prepare a newspaper for your basket project, you’ll need to fold up newspaper sheets into thin strips.
You can get weaving as soon as you have enough paper. A newspaper basket can be surprisingly strong – you can use it to hold magazines and books.
6. A rope nest basket
A pretty nest-shaped basket made of rope can be useful in the kitchen or at the dining table. You can use it to keep fruit, cookies, or bread.
Get a bowl to mold your basket on and wrap it in plastic film. Lay down a coil of rope at the bottom of the bowl and begin building your nest. Your aim should be to achieve results that resemble a bird’s nest — the coil can be a bit asymmetrical and use doubled layers at points. Once you achieve a shape that satisfies you, take out your Mod Podge and liberally brush it on. When it dries, it will hold the nest in shape, giving it a touch of gloss, as well.
7. A braid basket
If you have a stack of old T-shirts that you never use, you can turn it into a basket. Cut out the fabric in 2-inch-wide strips, sew the strips together to form a very long strip and then braid them to make a colorful rope. It’s easy to coil this material up in the shape of the basket, using needles and thread to sew everything in place.
8. A pretty burlap basket
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Get a length of thick, rough burlap and cut it into 2-inch-wide strips. Weave the strips to make a large cross. Gather the sections together and use them to form an enclosed container. Finish the edges with more burlap. To make sure that the sacking doesn’t sag, you can brush Mod Podge on the insides.
9. A Peltex basket
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Peltex is a special fabric that can be ironed on to any fabric. Ironing makes it stick to the other fabric and gives it stiffness. It’s easy to make a basket with such a stiff fabric.
10. The grocery bag egg basket
The paper that grocery bags are made of tends to be stiff enough to be useful as a raw material for a basket. Just as with the newspaper basket idea above, you need to cut grocery bags into strips and weave them. You can make a handle out of twisted strips of the same paper.