Fabric Bike Basket-Adventure in Troubleshooting

I fell in looooove with Anna's bicycle basket at Noodleheads, and lucky for me, she wrote a great tutorial too! I was convinced that this project would only take me an hour or so, but it soon became the bane of my existence and took more than 3 hours!!!! Here are some tips to avoid my mistakes (which, for the record, have nothing to do with the tutorial).

First of all, my fabric store didn't have any heavy weight, double-sided fusible interfacing. But the lady helping me didn't tell me that, she just gave me the next best thing which happened to be Heat and Bond Ultra. I DO NOT recommend it for this project. Oh...and my first cut was defective, so I had to go back for another one.

So here I am using Heat and Bond, which is rather floppy, to iron my lining to the shell- with it sliding down and wiggling every which way. So I pinned it, which is awkward when you are trying to iron.

I have no idea how Anna managed to get hers ironed so perfectly. I have two theories: either it's a tiny iron or she's magical! I think if I had the right type of interfacing it would have been much easier, but I have no idea how she got her fabric ironed so nicely along the bottom!

Next time I would choose the heaviest interfacing available that is still sewable and iron it onto the outside fabric before I sew everything together. Then I would peel the paper off the second layer, insert the fabric and iron the lining in. That way, even if the bottom lining doesn't totally adhere to the fabric, it would still be sturdy.

In the tutorial, Anna makes her own binding. I opted to buy ready made double fold bias binding instead since things weren't working out for me.

Another important tip:
LOOK AT YOUR CHILD'S HANDLE BARS BEFORE YOU SEW ON THE VELCRO ATTACHMENT!!! I made mine for Y-shaped handle bars as per the tutorial, assuming that Daniel's Strider bike would be the same. Nope. He has a T-shaped bar.

So, between running out of bobbin thread, poorly remaking the handle attachment, fighting the urge to curse up a storm, and ironing and re-ironing-I finally got it finished. It's not perfect. But I love it...thanks for the great tutorial and the interfacing help, Anna!