Basket Liner Tutorial

All right here's my first tutorial completely from scratch. Most of the time, I tweek and pull from 2 or more tutorials to make whatever it is that I'm making. Unfortunately, after looking at 20+ blogs that featured basket liner tuts, I came away very disappointed. Even the "good" ones seemed to be incomplete. So I decided to just wing it and make it up as I went. Fortunately for me, and my baskets, it turned out exactly as I had hoped!

The baskets are the BRANAS baskets from IKEA in white. I have several of them in Jonah's room and decided that they'd be great in my laundry/craft/sewing room make-over. I got 2 and am kinda kicking myself already that I didn't get 3. Oh, well, I'll make do.
What you'll need:
basket
3/4 yard fabric/basket
coordinating thread
20" ribbon/basket
enough elastic to encircle your basket + 2" overlap for stitching

rotary cutter and clear rule are very helpful, but scissors are sufficient!

First, I measured. Then measured a few more times to make sure I was getting everything straight. It's the old carpenter's line, "measure twice, cut once." Only in sewing I've learned to measure 3 or 4 times if you really want to be sure!
I cute my base piece first.
And because my sides are almost the same, but yet not, I marked the longer sides.
Using a 1/4" seam allowance, I sewed the four side pieces to the base. To ensure pretty corners, start sewing 1/4" (or your chosen seam allowance) in from the start and end points.
Iron all seams toward center base piece once all four sides are attached.

Then, back to the sewing machine. Line up aligning sides and sew a seam from the top of the basket liner in towards the base (makes for a prettier and much more even hem at the top).
Press seams open when all four side have been sewn.
I used my hem measure to then turn under one inch of the top to create a casing for my elastic. I pinned and ironed each side, allowing for ease where necessary.
After stitching my hem/casing seam, I trimmed the raw edge with pinking shears. I don't foresee these liners ever needing to be washed, so I didn't bother turning the edge under, though there was plenty of fabric to do that if you'd like.

I added button holes... which might seem contrary to the casing I just made, but I didn't plan on finishing the basket the way I did until it was too late to sew the button holes first then hem. I'll show you in a minute how I cheated! Also, I have an automatic button-holer now - it is fabulous!!!
Here is what I did. Sliced my buttonholes open, slid in a bit of ribbon and pinned it (after heat-sealing the edge with a lighter. Then I slit the inside piece of the hem with my seam ripper and fray-checked the raw edges so that I could still run my elastic through.
I decided to dun elastic instead of running ribbon all the way around because elastic is cheaper than ribbon and I had more on hand than of the ribbon.

Stitched my elastic together using a stretch stitch, and evenly distributed the gathers.
Slipped it on my basket and tied a bow with the end of my ribbon. When I had them tied I cut them evenly and heat sealed the ends.

And then I made another one...