I am a basket-case!

Last year, when I started my blog, I briefly had this idea of assigning a particular crafts material to every week and only make projects that involved the chosen material. The idea didn't last very long - I think I managed to do two "MoW"s before it morphed into a "MoM" and then went AWOL. Wow. Or rather not. AnyHOW, looks like I am in a "material of the month" phase again, as during the past month or so I have posted four projects that involved felt - the gingerbread hearts, two cushions, and a flag/banner. And now I am adding another felt project to the list. You've guessed it - I felt deeply about felt...

I actually had a rough day, today, exacerbated by the fact that my Methuselah of a laptop coughed up with a couple of viruses and then decided to forestall my attempts at going online *sighs*. After a brief moment of panic - what will I do if I don't get my daily fix of FB, not to mention being unable to access my cloud-based editorial systems for work - I realised that dear old Methuselah had just given me the greatest gift of all: Time to be creative without the web. And so I gathered my stuff, set up the sewing machine in the warmest room of my house and worked away. Here is the result.

A felt basket.

I had some 2m of grey felt on hand, recently bought as a bargain for about € 6.00. It is about 4mm thick.

To start with I decided how big I wanted my basket and cut 5 square pieces of it, roughly 18x18 cm.

I put two squares on top of each other, carefully aligning the sides, and simply sewed a straight line down close to one edge.

This way I sewed four squares together, ending up by closing the "circle" and sewing square 1 and square 4 together. The hardest bit was actually sewing in the bottom of the basket - fitting 8mm felt under the needle was hard.

Voila - a felt basket in less than an hour for about 50c. For extra stability I turned the rim down.

Although grey is big on trend at the mo, the finished object looked a bit bland. So out came the left-over red felt from the cushions and I quickly whipped up a little flower to adorn the basket.

These baskets are so easy to make. They don't require any fancy patterns - squares is all you need. The felt is easy to work with as it doesn't fray. Only your sewing machine may be a bit overpowered by the thickness of the felt layers. But you could actually hand-stitch the sides together - it would probably give a nice effect, too.

What will I put into my new basket??

Best,
 


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