Craft Project: Easter Basket Garter

Create beautiful holiday theme basket fabric garters to embellish baskets with strips of fabric and elastic. Add them on as embellishments to basket handles or rims. Here I have embellished this little baskets outer edge with a very pretty Easter print fabric in 3-inch wide strips. You can make them any width you desire, either narrow and wide, depending on your basket choice and style

Approximate Time: 20-30 minutes

Supplies:

• Fabric strips - 3-4 inches wide and as long as your basket measurements doubled in length
• Narrow elastic - the length of your basket sections exact length
• Sewing machine with straight stitch
• Scissors
• Safety pin
• Basket of choice and size

Instructions:

Measure the part of your basket that you will want to put your fabric garter onto (here I have embellished my baskets outer edge.) You will want to multiply this number of your basket by doubling that number in the length of your fabric so that when the elastic is sewn on, you will have lots of fullness and ruffle to your fabric strip. Your fabric strips will be as wide as you prefer (here, mine are 3 inches wide). You will need 2 pieces of your strip choice. And you will need elastic the width you prefer (here I choose 1/4 inch wide). Your elastic should be the same flush tight length as the basket length of your section you will be placing your garter around.

Take your 2 pieces of your fabric strips and place them wrong sides together and then stitch around all 3 sides starting at one end until you come back around to the remaining end where you will leave an opening for turning your fabric strip. After doing so then turn that last end - closed 1/2 of a seam allowance and stitch it closed with your machine. Now you will be adding the elastic to your fabric strip by placing the elastic in the backside of your strip in its center, starting at the outside edge. As you begin to stitch, you will need to pull the elastic slightly as you sew down that center section. This will gather your fabric strip as you move along creating the ruffled appearance to your fabric garter. As you near the other end, you will stitch the elastic to the end and stop.

You now have a ruffled fabric garter for your basket. Wrap it around your basket section and pin the 2 ends together in the back of that fabric strip. You can make one complete full closed fabric garter but I prefer to leave mine as an open strip and pin it in place so that I can use my fabric strip garter in other ways on other baskets such as curling it around a handle for a pretty look as well. See photos of examples.

By Julie from Tenn

By theseamstress