Projects that take longer than you think

I haven’t talked a lot about it, but I too love pintrest. Many months ago, I found this pin:

Love the idea, but it uses paper packing strips. I didn’t have those. I wondered if regular paper bags would work, and then didn’t do anything more about it.

 

Then I found this:

Perfect! She made adorable baskets with just paper bags!  I could do this!  And I had the perfect occasion to make them for. 

 

Now, you can look at the other tutorials for the specific instructions. I wanted SIZES here, people!  And I’ll add my tips for how to make it smoother too.  My baskets ended up approximately 8 inches cubed. 

Because I’m a crazy person, I couldn’t’ just make one. No. I had to make five at the same time.  And every SINGLE step took a ridiculous amount of time.

First: I cut off the thinner sides from each paper bag. 

Then I cut that big strip into two separate strips.  Each strip (after all the folding), was about 1.5 inches wide.  *all the cutting and folding took two full movies to get through.  And amazingly enough, it also made my biceps sore.  Yeah for multitasking!

 

Next: sew them up.

This took about 2 hours. And a TON of thread.  Surprisingly, sewing the fold side first left a smoother strip.  If your raw edges are a bit crazy, don’t worry. You can just trim them later.

Then you make your baskets.  Again, this took freakin forever!  You need to glue as you go. No matter how stupid your glue gun is and leaks like crazy – you will NOT be happy with the results if you try to glue it all at the end.

(the crazy wonky one on the right was my first attempt. It looks MUCH better if you glue each strip as you go!)

 

The inside of my baskets wasn’t quite as pretty as I’d like, so I sewed up some liners for them.  By far, this was the easiest, fastest step.  Even though each one was slightly different so I had to measure every single side and make everything one by one – it was still the easiest!

I’m totally happy with how they turned out.  It’s a good thing too!

And even better when filled with pretty goodies – I’ll write about that part next time!