The fun is in the making

While turning these wonderful fabric yarn balls above into a small basket I discovered something about myself. For me the greatest fun is in the making. It doesn't matter if it's crafts or cooking or even office work or breastfeeding. The greatest satisfaction for me is the process of figuring things out, how they work, why they work and how to improve them. You see when I wrote breastfeeding up there, I didn't mean it to sound like producing milk is super fun to me, but when I got hooked on the awesomeness of breastfeeding I wanted to know the hows and whys and I learned every bit I could find about it. If you are a new mom interested in breastfeeding and you ask me, you'll get a bio-chemistry lesson on the amazing world of lactoferrin and friends. I love to discover and learn and figure out how stuff works. That's true for sewing projects as well as science. But back to yarn balls from recycled t-shirts. I came across a bunch of shirts in my stash that had some prints and stains on them and I almost threw them out in a moment of spring cleaning, because I had forgotten why in the world I kept those. But thank goodness I didn't throw them in the trash right away because that is what some of them have become...

A scrappy fabric basket. And let me just tell you, it didn't involve any sewing or crochet... I pinned some rag rugs and baskets a while back, but I really didn't like the idea of monotonous hand sewing of long braided chains, and actually I preferred the look of crochet baskets anyways, but me and the hook never became friends. So I had some fun figuring out a way to make a basket that doesn't need any sewing or crocheting or complicated weaving... and no tools either other than a pair of scissors and a totally optional safety pin.

So watch out guys, I had some fun figuring this project out and I got some more ideas and variations in the works... tutorial coming soon.