A little evening playtime

Yesterday we spent most of the day in the yard, raking the gravel out of the lawn from a winter's worth of road maintenance and playing in the garden. I got most of the leaf mulch off of my front flower bed and worked in a bunch of compost - now THAT's a spring smell! Our Hyacinths are starting to poke their heads out, but the grass is all still brown.

While we were in Abbotsford I picked up a recent (March/April) Fons and Porter's Love of Quilting magazine - I don't buy many magazines these days, but this one had several things in it I thought I might actually try, so I bought it. It has a great article by Joyce Drexler on coiled fabric bowls that was absolutely irresistible. Once we were in for the evening, I pulled out the cotton clothesline bought at the coast for this and my box of 1" fabric strips. The start of the bowl was a little tricky, but once the base was bigger than the presser foot, things went well. She describes working with an oval bowl for starters - it probably would be easier than the circular one that I wanted to try first.

As you can see, it's a bit of a tight fit for my machine - true to my nature I didn't follow the directions completely and tried a few other things from my basket weaving experience to make the bowl more basket-like, giving it much steeper sides than is really practical given the size of my domestic sewing machine head. A larger bowl base would have made this easier.

The final bowl/basket was made from a full 50 foot roll of clothesline. The base is 6" at the point it starts to curve into the walls, and the whole thing is about 4 1/2" deep, measured by a ruler placed inside the bowl.

It didn't take more than an hour, and I now know that I should use a thread I LOVE as the thread plays a very strong role in the look of the final piece. I guess I'll just have to make another one! *grin*

Oh, and something you can't tell from looking at the photos - these were taken with my new camera, an early birthday gift (Thanks Mom and Dad!). If a camera could take an admiring photograph of itself, this one would. It's a beaut. And just in time to go to MQX with me next week!

Happy stitching,

Lisa