Fabric Rope Basket

I'm still on a rope bowl kick after the small ones I made for gifts. I recently received a box of old yarn and it happened to have this skein of bulky, really scratchy craft yarn or macrame cord? I wasn't sure how to use it but I thought it might work in a rope basket. First I tried sewing it with no fabric but it squished down to a weird plasticy and flat consistency. So I began wrapping the yarn with fabric.

I decided that I wanted to try making a larger basket, so I started out with a big bottom disk. This process was much slower than just sewing the rope together with an occasional pop of fabric. Having to stop and wrap the fabric scraps really takes awhile, it took me most of the day to make! 

To make the sides, the disk is placed vertically against the side of the machine. As I sewed along, the  basket was growing wider and wider until I stopped to look up how to bring in the sides. Turns out, if you keep the loose end taught, it will begin to close in. 

By this point, the basket was getting pretty hard to manage. I practically had my head inside the bowl to hold it up and to see where I was sewing haha! I added two handles and finished off the rope end with a fabric tab. Here's how it turned out.

I used up lots of white scraps but my favorite bits are the little pops of orange. 

It's a little wobbly and wonky in spots but for my first attempt, I think it turned out pretty good! It works nicely for holding my yarn, which is what I was going for. And I used up a few more fabric scraps! Now that I've tried sewing both plain rope and the fabric rope, the plain rope is definitely faster and easier to sew than adding fabric to the whole project. I'm not finished experimenting with these rope projects though, they're really fun to make!

Linking up with Finish It Up Friday at Crazy Mom Quilts