keepin' it real and a tutorial

I had hoped to get this tutorial up earlier, but my weekend was a bit crazy between dinner with friends, last minute baby shower sewing (which meant last minute fabric shopping), church, baby shower, and valentine making and I just did not have time to get it up!

I will apologize in advance for the poorly lit photos, but I was doing this after dark Sunday night!

You might recognize these baskets from my felt flower tutorial. When I made those a couple of year ago for Easter I used this tutorial. When I was thinking about what I wanted to do for Tallulah's class valentines I got the idea to make a miniature version of the basket (half the size of the Easter ones) and, I thought, maybe, someone out their might be interested in a tutorial, so here goes.
Okay, so two pieces of craft felt will make 3 mini baskets. Here you can see, I cut 3 9x6 pieces and 6 9x1 pieces. If you just want one basket you need 1 9x6 pieces and 2 9x1 pieces.
Stack two 9x1 pieces and stitch all the way around using a 1/4" seem allowance.

Then use your pinking shears and trim the the edges all the way around (you don't have to do this, I just think it makes it look a little bit fancier) then set aside.

Fold you 9x6 piece in half and sew the sides with a 1/4" seem allowance.

Make a square, about 1.25" as a pattern for your squared corners, like this

Cut the two folded/stitched corners using your pattern. It should look like this now.

Grab those pinking sheers again and trim the top edge and the sides like this.

Open up those squares you cut and fold and stitch like this, 1/4" seem.

Use the pinking sheers on those edges and this is what you've got so far.

Next fold over the top edge and sew on the handle.

Since these were for Valentines Day I cut our hearts and hot glued them to the baskets but you could easily embellish them with other things. They would be great for party favors in this size or the larger one. They sew up really fast and are fun to make. If you make some of your own, please post pictures in my flickr group!

And for all of you who wonder how I do it all, this is what my living room looked like when I went to bed last night. Yes, that is (or at least it was before it was thrown all over the floor) clean laundry, and yes, I did have so much laundry to fold that I ran out of laundry baskets and started using cardboard boxes. Just keepin' it real.
I am happy to report that as of this afternoon all that laundry is folded and put away.

Did I really just post that picture for the whole world to see? Yikes!