Craft with us: our William Morris picnic blanket

20th July 2022

A necessary summer accessory? Our William Morris picnic blanket of course! Whether you’re going to the beach or the park, you can roll up your patch work picnic blanket, grab your picnic blanket and some yummy treats and go!

We thought we’d let you know how we made them..

How to make the picnic basket

We’d had this basket for a while, and decided to bring it back to life with a new lining fabric. We chose our William Morris Strawberry Thief design for this, of course you can pick any design you’d like. We used our cotton fabric for this.

We started by measuring the base inside of the basket, and then add the measurement up from the base to the top of the basket.
Add 1cm all the way around to allow for a hem to attach the frill
Now you have the measurements, you can cut the fabric to the inner size of the basket
With the fabric pattern faced down, lay in the basket and pin your corners to make a fitted box shape
Take the fabric out and sew the triangles of the corners so that the shape of the basket takes shape. You should then be left with a box shape with four triangles – one at every corner. Trim off the excess fabric.
Your frill can be any size you’d like in terms of it’s depth, but add 2.5cm for a 1.5cm hem on the edge and 1cm for the hem to join to the lining.
Cut the length of your frill either one and half or two times the length around the opening of your basket – depending on how full you like the frill. Our frill for example is twice the length of the opening.
Cut the frill in half so you have two pieces. Hem along one edge of each, then hem at the other end. Then stitch a gather stitch along the raw edge.
Next you need to gather the frill to match the length of your liner. We found it easier to put the liner in the basket, mark with a pin where the frill would star and end at each side of the liner next to the handle. Then remove the liner from the basket and pin the frill up to the pins. Pin the frill face to face with the liner. Stitch the frill to the liner and then put back in the basket.

Your basket lining is now done – super easy to make and you can switch it out to be different Morris designs depending on your mood!

Next, we made the blanket, we love how it’s a quilted blanket, you can use any designs you like together, we went for a blue and white theme and matched the basket lining to it. We even made the little wrap so that you can carry it around easily.

How to make the William Morris picnic blanket

For the blanket, we used the quilt as you go method.

Here’s what we cut:

We cut 64 six inch squares
21 William Morris Eyebright
21William Morris Merton blue
22 William Morris Willow bough blue
We then cut 64 William Morris Strawberry thief blue eight inch squares and 64 six inch wadding squares, we used polyester wadding as we had some in the craft cupboard!

Take a look at the quilt as you go method – YouTube videos explain it much better than we could here.

We then made a strap for the quilt with four eight inch William Morris blue strawberry thief squares, two Eyebright squares, one Willow bough and one Merton square and four six inch wadding squares.
Sew them together using the quilt as you go method and before you sew down the length hems insert a strap. Ours is cut at 10cm wide folded in half and hemmed at either side so it is finished at 4.5 cm wide and 25 cm long.
Insert under the side hem and stitched over once inside the side hem then again when you sew down the side hem.
Finish with 3 pieces of Velcro measured to fit when you have wound up your picnic blanket.

And there you go! A matching set of a quilted picnic blanket and basket. We always find quilting really relaxing too, so take your time, get some yummy snacks and an audiobook out and enjoy. Then for many summers to come, you can pull it out the cupboard and take it with you on adventures.

For the keen baker or chef, a beautiful oven glove is such a perfect Christmas gift 🫶🏻🎄 This is our beautiful William Morris Daisy design ✨
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Craft with us: our William Morris picnic blanket

How to make the picnic basket

How to make the William Morris picnic blanket

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