WIP Saturday

It's National Scrapbooking Day today but I seem to have gotten a wee bit confused because I spent it sewing!  But I have a good reason; I finally had both a fresh roll of thread and more importantly, time to sew thanks to the May Day long weekend.  In fact, I'm on day three of sewing, having spent the last two days at my friends' cottage working on various stitching projects.

Today I put together the final four blocks for my HST sampler quilt-along so I'm feeling very accomplished!

 Block #17

 Block #18

 Block #19

Block #20

Whew!  That's 20 quilt blocks now ready for squaring up and sashing tomorrow.  Then the fun of block placement begins.

I also finished off another milk carton woven basket.  This one in a smaller size (the size we've been making with my students at work) - 2x3 base and using orange juice cartons.  If you missed it, you can see my first basket here.

Not too shabby for a day's work.

Basket Weaving

Today I'm sharing a 'new' creation.  Last Sunday I took a course in how to use old milk cartons (or juice, yoghurt or Swedish 'fil' milk - basically, any Tetrapack brand 1 litre or larger cartons) to weave into a basket.  I made a bread basket but the lady who taught the class regularly makes handbags and totes in all sorts of sizes and patterns.

Side View

For this basket I used 1.5 litre milk cartons and it's a 4x3 base size.  The technique is reasonably easy to get started with, although joining up the corners and finishing the round is a bit trickier.  I reckon total construction time for a first time go was about 4 hours.

Top View

We're going to teach our grade two students how to make smaller versions of these for a fun spring project next month, complete with wrapped string eggs to place inside.  We're a bit mad for it, I'm sure - if only for the sheer volume of cartons we're asking families to bring in, which then need to be cut down to into stripes.  Eek!  I'm guessing I'll be mad as a hatter by the end of it all.  Wish us luck!