A few months ago the lovely @sheepBlue mentioned that she regretted not signing up for the Basket Swap in time. I haven’t swapped in ages, and making something for a dear friend sounded really nice, so I offered to do a personal swap for a basket. I had seen a cool YouTube tutorial that shows you how to make a square basket with any dimensions, and included a worksheet to help you. It seemed perfect! I had visions of making something with Foundation Paper Piecing, to stash bust some of my 2.5" squares, and even decided to get out of my head, and not go nuts planning. Just dive in by making some FPP stars, and see where the Muses led me. I put the 9 stars together over the next few days, and was thrilled with how they came out. Each little star block is just 3".
Em specifically was looking for something to go under her side table, and sent me a link to the table on Wayfair, which helpfully included the dimensions. I think however, I misunderstood via our texts, exactly what she needed. I got it in my head that she specifically wanted a square basket, to fill that space. Now I had to make my stars fit into this square basket. I went back to the tutorial, and tried to make sense of it. It required a fusible foam to make the basket stand up. The YouTuber recommended a specific brand, but mentioned an alternate brand, which my Michael’s had in stock in town. Perfect! Or so I thought…
When I went to do the math, I realized that my foam wasn’t big enough at only 20" wide. (Because I was trying to make a 13" square basket with 6.5" deep sides, which makes for one giant piece of quilting.) I became worried that if I tried to piece the foam together, I’d have a ‘break’ in the rigidity of the basket along the seam line. Maybe I should make 2 rectangular baskets, that sat next to each other? And what if I put my carefully made stars in the pieced front, only to have to cut them out, to make the basket?!?! I decided I should try making a prototype to test it all out.
This is the prototype. It was made from 1-yard cuts of fabric in my stash. I did have fun quilting in free-form circles around the tree rings. And it stood up nicely, and I’d have enough foam to make 2 “real” baskets, but there was no way I’d have them done in time for me to meet up with Sheep (and @Abbeeroad!) for a Girls Weekend. I still hadn’t figured out the placement of the stars, and what I’d use as background fabric. At this point I confessed my failure to Em, and showed her the prototype. To which she replied, “Oh, it didn’t have to be square.”
Why did I think that?!?! Oh well. Making it round meant I could finish the basket in the 24 hours before I had to leave! I did a bit of math, spaced out my stars with some scraps in a similar grey-on-white background to the stars. Then I added a strip of black and white polka dot. I still wanted a bit more scrappiness, so I dug through my leftover bits of crumb piecing, and sliced and diced, and repieced till I had a long skinny strip. The top and bottom are quilted with loops, and the stars are both outlined, and through the center in a starburst shape.
Here’s a detail of the quilting through the stars.
I lined the inside with the same blue fabric as the prototype, because well, it was out on my cutting table, and I didn’t feel like putting it away. 
Plus it was a nice contrast to the outside, and to the black & white stripe that I used for the binding. (Good job Past-Jennie, cutting out extra binding strips and adding them to your binding bin!)
Here it is holding goodies on our trip. I was thrilled that even though I finished it after I finished packing for the trip (seriously I was hand sewing the binding when my in-laws arrived that night, right before bed), that it was soft enough to fold down and ride along in my purse on the plane!
And here it is in its new home, under Em’s table.
Thank you so much Em, for pushing me out of my usual habits and forcing me to go someplace new an unexpected. I love crafting for you!