Kathy's springcleaning project

I decided a useful coil basket would be just the right project to show off the fun variety of fabrics from everyone, plus fit the theme of cleaning up.

I cut each of the fabrics into strips about 2 cm. wide, found some cotton clothesline cord, and decided what sort of a pattern/colour sequence seemed right. Using a zigzag machine stitch, I wrapped the cord as I went, keeping about 30 cm ahead of the machine with the wrapping. New strips were introduced by using a couple of pins to hold the old and new ends snugly onto the cord.


The basket grew very quickly, a very satisfying way to enjoy pretty fabrics and "spring clean" a bit of my stash. I have made two others since, with several more in mind. This one is about 8" wide at the base, a good size for maintaining enough stiffness to hold its shape nicely. A larger one I also just finished ended up larger, and is a bit floppy. This stiffer one is nicer I think, so I will work at this size from now on.

The decoration is a self-cover button using a scrap of Lesley's lovely bright pink fabric.
The fabric contributions were kept separate, resulting in stripes, so they could be seen individually (rather than randomly mixing them together for a more neutral pattern).

Christina ended up with this basket for Christmas.  (", )

Ruth's Spring Cleaning project

For months I had a clear idea of the project I was going to do, but when it came down to it, it was too complicated with too many hurdles in my way. "Hey, this is supposed to be fun!" I thought, so I gave myself permission to throw out that idea and be simple and spontaneous. At our retreat on Pender Island, Lesley gave us each a delightful tea towel with a drawing of a sewing machine printed on it. I use mine as the cover for my machine. At the time Kathy commented that this tea towel was just begging to be embellished, and suddenly it was the right time. In the patchwork panel, you can see little snippets of all the fabrics everybody supplied and two special buttons.

As for the requirements of the challenge: it is definitely part of "spring cleaning" to spiff up my sewing area by improving the cover for my machine. My old faithful Bernina 730 sewing maching blew its capacitor lately and I replaced it with a newer Bernina 1015. Using green was easy, thanks to Julie and Louisa who both supplied fabric with greens.

I'm looking forward to seeing what all of you have been working on for this challenge!