Wednesday, July 24, 2013

Bike Basket for K




It got to the point a month or two ago that I was over pushing K in his stroller when he was acting too lazy to walk. Now if he doesn't want to walk to the store with me, his yellow bike (Strider) is his main mode of transport. This is also his means of getting to the park. He has a tricycle that he used to take, but the bike is so much faster that he gets really frustrated with the tricycle now. The good point about the trike, however, was that it had a basket - perfect for collecting rocks. The yellow bike did not...until now!

I wanted the basket to have structure, but also be able to easily put on and take off. As per Y's suggestion, I started with a little wire basket from the 100 yen shop.
 

After measuring, I cut some rectangles and sewed them together to make the outside of the box.


Then I sewed the bottom rectangle on and made sure that the basket would fit inside. Wahoo!


I also added three straps to outside of the bag, although I didn't take a photo of these for some reason. There are two towards the top and one at the bottom to match the handles on the Strider.


Next was the lining. This is where things got a bit messy. I wanted the basket to be waterproof so that it would be easy to clean with just a wet rag. I basted the bottom fabric and vinyl together, but for some reason decided I didn't need to do that for the sides.


After sewing it all up, I realized that the vinyl and lining fabric made a bit of a mess, but it was really difficult to fix. IIn the end, I decided that K wouldn't care, so I just folded in the top edges in towards each other and top stitched around.


With that it was ready to be tied on and waiting for rocks.


K loves it, but the first time he took it out he put his water bottle in it and it made it wobble about a bit, given the weight of the bottle. Now he likes to carry my shopping bag, keys, wallet and phone to the store for me. Unfortunately, the basket is too small for him to actually bring the groceries home for me...I should have thought of that!
 

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