homemade Moses basket

After about a week of working on it, off and on, I finished Baby's basket last night.

I've been wanting to have a Moses basket for our babies, but just haven't been wanted it badly enough to fork over $70 (or more, depending on sales and the company I was looking at).

So, when I was walking through Walmart one day and saw this basket for $5 in their home decorating section, I decided to try to make/line my own. How hard could it be, right?

The first step (other than drawing up a pattern, which I figured I'd skip), was to figure out how to pad the bottom. I didn't have any batting on hand (and didn't want to spend any more money) so I folded one of the "rag" towels into thirds and laid it in the bottom. I traced the outline of the edge with a Sharpie and cut.

I sewed through the center of what was then a stack of three pieces of terry cloth to keep them from shifting.
Then I took some dark brown quilting weight material and made a sort of pocket that I slipped stack of toweling into. Sewed the end, quilted it, and the little mattress (of sorts) was done.



The first half was done, now to make the bumper!

-the layers of the bumper: inside, padding, outside-

I used material that I had in the closet for the bumper - more dark brown quilting weight and also some aqua and white seersucker from a blouse that had belonged to my Gramma.

This is the part that I really should have made a pattern for. If anyone reading this is thinking of making one, I'd really recommend doing a trial run with paper!
The bumper I made turned out really cute, just about 4" too small! Also, I tried to sew the entire thing together and forgot that I need to turn it right side out! So, more stitch ripping but both mistakes were easy to fix.

For the inside I did a colorblock pattern with the brown on the ends and the seersucker in the middle. I used the rest of the towel for the padding, and the last bit of the seersucker for the outside.

I really love how it turned out, but next time I will make a pattern and plan how I'm going to turn it right-side out!