She’s a Genius!

Anna from Noodlehead is the genius, in case you are wondering:).   Let me explain myself :).

I made my first fabric bike basket in March of this year, for my son’s 5th birthday.  I didn’t want to pay the $15.00 for one and was excited when I thought I’d just make one with fabric.  He loved it.  It was used well and can actually fit quite a bit in it.  I also knew that the design could be improved some.  Sadly, it was rained on and blown on with dusty wind and doesn’t look very good anymore.  I will be better this time at having him bring in his new basket!  (look at the beautiful dead March grass in the pic)

I made my second bike basket with the traditional bike basket shape, for the Ruffle Your Stuff contest.  I loved the shape of this one and how large it was.

Recently I started to walk/jog with my kids.  It’s more like this:  warm-up, walk, speed up, stop, wait for my 5 year old to get up the hill, walk some more, then try and catch up on the downhill by sprinting.  It’s fun ;).  We walk/jog 1.8 miles, and my boys, ages 5 and 6, are real troopers.  They know the stopping points and once I got to the last one, my 6 year old was sitting on the ground resting and said, “Mom, I really need a bike basket so I can carry some water.”  And they deserve a bike basket to carry some water if they will let me drag them around on their bikes 3 times a week.

I thought to myself, “Man, I should really try a new version with the traditional shape and use some boning and maybe water-proof it somehow.”  The VERY next day, shazam!  Anna from Noodlehead posted a wonderful and oh-so-very cute version of a fabric bike bucket.  Seriously adorable.  And I thought, “She beat me to it!”  ;) .  And not only is hers dang cute, it’s also easier.

SO, what I had planned on doing before seeing Anna’s version was make a weather proof basket using iron-on vinyl, and add some boning to help hold it’s shape.  But after reading through her tutorial I knew she did a great job with her design and there was no point trying a different way because she had it down!

The basket came together quickly and is so cute.  After the pieces were cut, it took a little less than half an hour to put together.  Awesome.  Seriously, I was reading through her tutorial and said out loud, “She’s brilliant!”  The only thing I did differently is that I inserted some boning along the curved front panel, just before doing the binding portion of her tutorial, and made the whole thing a little bit bigger.  The next four pics are just where you’d place the boning.

*The iron-on vinyl did not work well.  I think if you aren’t handling the fabric very much then it would be great.  It stayed on, but as much as you have to move around and turn the fabric with it on, the vinyl got bumpy and creased in places and ended up looking a bit crappy.  So I made one with iron-on vinyl and unpicked the whole thing just to take the vinyl off and start over.  I could NOT bring myself to waste the cute Riley Blake fabric my boys chose for their basket!  I bet laminated fabric would work better than the iron-on vinyl.

The two baskets I made before are still fun and doable. I just showed my son his new basket.  He said he really likes this one and still likes his George one.  Then he said, “Well, I will use BOTH of them.”  Thanks Anna, for the great tutorial!

      

D thought he was pretty smart to put it on this way.  He said it was easier to get stuff out of his basket this way.

By the way…does anyone else have a love hate relationship with their seam-ripper?  My husband has seen me use it–a lot.  I was annoyed one night ripping some seams and telling him how bad I hate to un-pick something I’ve sewed and what a waste of time it is.

He said, “Yeah, you’d think they could think of something easier to do that, huh.”

I laughed and said, “You do realize that if I just did it right the first time, I wouldn’t need one at all, right?”