Fabric Bucket TUTORIAL & PATTERN

Fabric Bucket free sewing TUTORIAL and PATTERN

You only need a few scraps of fabric to make these cuties.  The one I show in the tutorial is a 4 inch bucket.  That's the size I mostly make as it stands up well on its own.  I've also made a 6 inch bucket for a gift that required more than a 4 inch size.  I purchased 40cm (16 inches) of fabric to make this 4 inch bucket and I can get two buckets from the length of fabric.  If you choose fabric wisely, you won't need interfacing.  I use Duck cloth which requires no interfacing.  Start by cutting out the following:

Two:  8.5 x 6.25 inch (on the fold - as shown in the photo)
Two:  2 x approx. 5 inch 

Keeping the fabric folded, cut out 2 x 1.75 inch corners (Pay attention to which is the 2 inch side and which is the 1.75 inch side - refer to the photo.  The fold is the bottom edge in the photo) from both corners and from both fabric pieces.

Mark and cut the corners:

This is what it looks like when unfolded:

Take your 2 x approx. 5 inch pieces:

Fold them in half lengthwise and press.  Fold the edges to the middle and press.  Top stitch along both lengths of each piece. These will be the handles.  Trim them both to 4.5 inches in length:

Now the fun part!!!  Grab your favourite rubber stamp - whether that be a photopolymer (clear) one, a red rubber one or one you (or someone else) have carved from an eraser.  It can be detailed or simple - it doesn't matter.  Get some felt and put on a plate.  Squeeze some acrylic paint onto the felt and using a paintbrush, 'paint' the acrylic paint into the felt so that there are no more 'puddles' of paint.  It's now an inkpad:

Press your stamp into the inked felt and stamp away onto the fabric, making sure you have reasonably even spacing.  Rotate the stamp to create a random pattern.  Here's where I started:

Keep going until the fabric is covered:

To make it look like you've cut the fabric from a bolt, you need to stamp part of the image along the cut edge.  Place some scrap paper under your fabric and stamp the image on the edge of the fabric, like this:

While you wait for your fabulous stamped creation to dry (it doesn't take very long), wash out your felt and you can re-use it.  Clean your paintbrush and plate.  By this time your stamped fabric should be dry.  Press the stamped fabric using the cotton setting, no steam.  As the bucket is unlikely to be laundered, the ink should remain permanent.  I know, because I've spilt acrylic paint on my jeans and I still haven't got it out!!!!

Onto construction of the bucket.  I use a 1/4 inch seam throughout.  Start by pressing 1/4 inch hem on the 2 edges of both the 'I' shapes as shown in the picture:

Unfold the hem and sew the side seams of both the outer and lining bags.  Finger press the seams open:

Sew the bottom corners of each bag (sorry - not an actual picture of the corner but hopefully you get the idea):

Turn the outer bag right side out:

Mark 1/2 inch either side of each side seam as shown in the photo:

Pin the handles using the marks as a guide.  There should be a 1 inch gap between one end of the handle to the other:

With wrong sides together, place the lining inside the outer bag, lining up the side seams:

Top stitch around the top edge to close the bucket.  This is where I have a confession.  All my photos show pins however I took them all out as I find pins get in the way because when I use pins, I concentrate on not running over them rather than lining up seams etc., so personally, I don't like to use them.  Here is the bucket all finished!:

Here it is next to another one I stamped using one of my own eraser stamps.  As you can see, it looks very different - just by using different coloured fabrics and stamps!:

As I mentioned at the beginning, I made a 6 inch version.  For this one, I used a clear photopolymer stamp on white duck cloth.  Here is the comparison between the 6 inch and 4 inch: