Wednesday, October 10, 2007

Martha Stewart Felted Sweater Basket

I think I mentoned before that when I was in Canada seeing to Dad I picked up a bunch of 100% wool sweaters to experiment with felting (or fulling for the purists out there). They were very inexpensive but very bulky. The first one I played with ended up being dyed with Kool Aid and turned into a table top container for bits and pieces. (see Spetember 18) The next one I tackled was a white Aran style sweater.

Martha Stewart has instructions on her site for turning a similar sweater into a knitting basket...If you would like to see her instructions log into her site and search on knitting basket.
I did several things differently than Martha. I kept the sides tall rather than folding them into the basket. Since I kept the sides tall I needed something to stiffen the sides so I added some Timtex. I went for a round base rather than the oval she recommends because I could not draw a nice even oval. Since I used Timtex to stiffen the sides I lined the whole thing in grey Ultrasuede. Here is how it came out:


I intend to store balls of knitting yarn in it as I seem to have been acquiring a lot of yarn recently. Even if I never use the yarn stored in my new basket, Alex does not go after my yarn so I can leave the new basket out to be admired.

Update to the four seasons quilt swap - here are a couple of pictures of the quilt I received from Fiona in England. Her site is http://www.scraps-in-progress.blogspot.com/. What I particularly liked about her effort is that she did things she had never done before like satin stitched stems, yo-yo flowers and a pieced back. Thanks Fiona!



3 comments:

Fiona said...

Glad you like it! And it looks better in your photographs than in mine!

meggie said...

You have to know--- I would have loved to have that quilt for me!! Isn't it just gorgeous!

Jennie said...

Next time you want to draw an oval, put two thumbtacks a few inches apart on a piece of currogated cardboard. Put a loop of string around them (not as big as you want your oval). Put a pen in the string, stretch it out, and draw around the pushpins, letting the string pull against both pushpins. Perfect oval.