I needed a liner for a basket for collecting eggs. This is a small basket but I will need a bigger basket before long as we got some new chickens.

I thought I would try sewing around and around a flat piece of felt as I had seen on Lyn’s blog. http://rosiepink.typepad.co.uk/rosiepink/handmade-felt-and-stitch-bowls.html she sells  an ebook of how to do it. If I had downloaded it and if I had followed it I probably would have had better results. I am much to clever for that, not.  I did it form a vague memory of Lyn mentioning something on the Forum.

So I found a piece of felt  and cut it to what I hope will fit my basket. Nothing beats guessing when its right. 🙂

Next I started stitching, switching the machine from turtle speed to rabbit speed as neatness doesn’t really count here. I also used up all my part bobbins so now I have some empty ones.

As you can see after the first go round it is still flat felt. I decided there was not enough stitching so loaded up the machine with orange and off I went again around and around.

As you can see that didn’t help at all. There was a slight curving on one side but not what I would call a bowl. Still I needed a basket liner and after all this is not a beauty piece but a partial piece I cut it.

and sewed it

Here it is with some eggs in just to prove it really is an egg basket. I haven’t really used it yet in the barn. Theses are some that where collected this morning that are not in cartons yet.

I think the problem besides not buying the tutorial and following the instructions is that my felt was fairly thick and well fulled. I do know from my few attempt at free motion machine embroidery that the felt does strange things if not backed with something. The other thing that may have done it was I started at the outside. Perhaps if I had started in the middle the felt would have reacted differently.  All in all I ended up with a basket liner and had fun sewing like the wind round and round.