Collapsible Easter Basket

Easter has been my favorite holiday ever since I was a little girl. I would start to get super excited when the Cadbury commercials would start advertising on TV. I could almost taste the Cadbury Crème Eggs and I seriously wished for the Cadbury Bunny to be my very own pet. Each year I would be sure to tell the Easter Bunny that all I wanted in my Easter basket was Cadbury Eggs (and some live baby chicks, but that’s another story)!

I didn’t want jelly beans, malted milk balls, peanut butter eggs or anything else and on Easter morning. I would be absolutely ecstatic when I would find my hidden plastic eggs and open them to reveal Cabury Eggs inside. I even had a specific way I would eat them for the most possible enjoyment! I will never forget those days….aah! Although I limit myself to one Cadbury Crème Egg per year now (I learned how to eat healthy, thank goodness) they still make me smile!

Now that you know how much I love Easter it’s time to start working on a collapsible Easter basket to fill with all those Cadbury Eggs!!

I had the idea of collapsible baskets when my boys started accumulating them year after year when loving grandmothers kept buying them each Easter. Tip to grandmothers: we really appreciate your thoughtfulness, however, most of us don’t have a closet dedicated solely to Easter baskets! So, if any grandmothers are reading this, we love you very much, we just have too much guilt throwing out Easter baskets every year but don’t have room to store them!

Okay, here we go!

Collapsible Easter Basket Instructions:

• ½ yard each of two coordinating fabrics (fat quarters would work well if you made the basket slightly smaller)
• ½ yard craft interfacing
• Thread
• Pinking sheers or pinking rotary blade
• Hot iron
• Buttonhole attachment
• Two buttons
• Seam ripper
• Needle
• Disappearing fabric marker
• Pins
• Sewing machine

Step 1: Cut out two squares of fabric that measure 12 ½ by 12 ½ inches. (You can make these squares any size you want, however, when I was experimenting with the baskets the bigger the square was the more flimsy the basket was…and we need this to be sturdy for all those eggs!)

Step 2: Cut out two squares of interfacing (I used Pellon 808 Craft-Fuse Fusible Interfacing) that are 12 by 12 inches. If you are making a different size account for ¼ inch on each side. Iron the interfacing on the wrong side of each piece of fabric centering the interfacing.

Step 3: Decide which fabric will be the inside of the basket and using a disappearing fabric marker draw a ¼ inch border around the edge of the square. Divide that square into 9 equal smaller squares.

Step 4: Pin all layers together.

Step 5: Stitch one entire side along your marked edge. Turn the corner and when you get to the first line you are going to turn your fabric and stitch 1/3 of the way down and 1/8 inch away from the line. Turn and stitch ¼ inch. Turn again and stitch back to up to the edge. Repeat this same pattern on the next line and on the opposite side of the fabric. Or, refer to the photo for a visual of how to sew the lines!!!

Step 6: Using pinking sheers or a rotary cutter fitted with a pinking blade trim all the way around the outside edge. Now carefully make one clean cut in between the stitched lines. This will create the flaps that will make the sides of the basket.
 

Step 7: Fold flaps and finger crease all marker lines.

Step 8: Ready to sew lots of buttonholes? We will sew six of them by the end of this tutorial so if you haven’t done many you are going to be a pro by the end of this!

Since we have double reinforced fabric square buttonholes are going to work best. First fold the flaps according to the first picture in this step (middle flap up first and two side tips criss-cross over each other). Mark where the buttonholes will be by sticking pins through all layers of fabric and draw a line with a disappearing fabric marker. Pull back one layer of fabric and mark where the second buttonhole will be.

Step 9: Place button in buttonhole foot and attach to your machine. Place fabric under the foot and align with markings. (Check your sewing machine user manual to see details on buttonholes for your specific machine.) Sew the buttonhole.

Step 10: Using a sharp seam ripper or small sharp scissors cut the opening. Check to make sure your button fits through the buttonhole. It should be a snug fit. Repeat three more times on the basket.

Step 11: Sew two buttons (on either side) aligning with the buttonholes. Make sure to leave enough slack in the thread for your button to go through three layers of fabric (account for the handle that we haven’t made yet!). My boys literally have thousands of Legos so I grabbed a sword to account for the layers of fabric. If the thread is too tight on the button the fabric will bunch and the basket will look misshapen.

Step 12: Cut two pieces of fabric for the handle 17 ½ inches by 1 ½ inches. Cut two pieces of interfacing 16 ½ inches by 1 inch and iron them onto the wrong sides of the fabric carefully centering them.

Step 13: Stitch all the way around the outside of the rectangle leaving a ¼ inch seam allowance. Trim with pinking sheers for the same raw edge effect as the basket.

Step 14: Mark where you want buttonholes on the handle and sew buttonholes according to the same directions above.

Step 15: Assemble basket and fill with Easter grass, candy and eggs…preferably Cadbury! When you are finished, unbutton and fold flat for easy storage! It will be ready for you to use again next year!