Mother's Day Sewing and Dressing My Bed

I decided to make fabric buckets/baskets for the moms in my life - my mom, stepmom, and mother-in-law. I was inspired by Anna's versions at Noodlehead. She in turn based hers on the tutorial at Ric Rac. We added in some dishrags knitted by my husband. (Yes, my husband knits, in the grand tradition of pirates and sailors, so he says :))

This one is for my mom. It's probably about 10.5"in diameter. As far as interfacing, I used fusible fleece on the outside/pieced part and then stitched in the ditch along the vertical seams. I used some Peltex 71 fusible interfacing in the lining, to make sure that the bucket had some structure, but was still scrunch-able.

This one followed the measurements from the tutorial, so I think it is about 5.5" diameter finished. I used lightweight interfacing on the pieced part and fusible fleece on the lining (the pattern calls for lightweight interfacing and a strip of batting).

One of these went off to my mother in law, not sure which one... I had intended to make two nesting baskets by I got my math a little wrong and basically they were the same, except one was about a 1/4" shorter than the other, making them look like mistakes instead of intentionally different. So, I kept one!

Hope you and yours had a fantastic Mother's Day!!

This is my Naked Bed Challenge (see button at right for more info) WIP. This is essentially a slapdash project. I had two Moda Scrap Bags in Fandango. I picked 55 strips of differing widths (whatever was left after trimming the selvages - the strips are 1", 1.5", 1.75", and 2" finished) and they are each about 31" in length.  Then I took a selvage to selvage strip of Kona Bone, sewed it to either end of the Fandango strip and then cut the solid strip at a random spot with a scissors.

This is a shot of the 2.5" and 2.25" (unfinished) strips

The strips with the two different patterns were a variation on that method. I plan to square it up at the end. I definitely could have measured everything out and cut it to make it come out square/rectangular in the end, but I didn't.

There's definitely more color variation after adding the thinner strips

This photo has five main panels of strips. I have about 16 strips left to add. The idea of the challenge is to "dress" your bed. I lucked out because right now we are in a double, so I can make it slightly smaller than those folks out there in kings! I think I may have to add a border, but I'm not sure. If my calculations are correct - and they usually aren't - it should be about 71" x 85", which is more like a twin.

The jury is still out on how I feel about it... My husband said that he really liked it. So, that's at least one thumbs up!