Back to the Easy Part.

Before I was so rudely interrupted by James Bond yesterday I was telling you about the mini feathers. The secret is that you can cut down the tip of any feather, whatever size, with manicure scissors. I prefer those because of the curve. The yellow/orange feathers on the basket yesterday started out over 6" long. Snip point of the quill of the feathera little longer than you want your mini feather. Shape the tip part of the feather in a curve. The feather will not fall apart. If the quill is fine enough you can get a couple of feathers out of one. That's what I did with the yellow one. That's all there is to it.

I dug out the Penelope canvas baskets to work on today. I am going to need a lot of baskets to fill up the shop. I found that 12 forms were already made. Yay! That meant that I could just do the decorative part, the fun part. I use the same over dyed thread on these that I use on the coiled baskets. These take a lot less time that the coiled version. This is what the start looks like. It doesn't look like much, does it?

I decided that I need a few baskets that look like they are being worked on. This one is a large oval. I won't go into all of the details. There is a tutorial for making them in the tutorial section. That makes sense...... Anyway, using two threads, first I did a row of back stitch between the rows of canvas. Then I pulled out the top 4 rows of horizontal canvas threads. Then I simply curled the verticals outwards. The pile of threads on the table, leading to the basket, are the threads that I pulled out. I will probably do a couple more of these. They are the most realistic when it comes to unfinished baskets.

I finished 6 more baskets. I used natural thread on three of them. It was Needle Necessities thread in natural colors. The other three are also Needle Necessities thread, but in brighter colors. I think that I like the natural ones best. I tend to like that coloring in real baskets too.

The stitches that I used on this batch was half cross stitch, back stitch, running stitch, stem stitch and a couple of real basket edging stitches on the natural ones.

Are you counting along? When I finish the other five I will have an even dozen in this batch. Believe it or not, I am actually enjoying making these. It is a very relaxing process. If I don't fall asleep doing them, I will have them finished tonight.

See you tomorrow.