Recently I took a class at Sew Much More in north Austin. It was the Rope Basket Class. I’d had the It’s A Wrap book for years (literally), but hadn’t done anything more than read through it several times. I was happy when I saw they were offering a rope basket class.

Fabric bowl and lid

So here’s my rope basket and lid from the class. I used a little bit less than a yard of fabric and about 50 feet of cotton clothesline cording. The sewing time in class was just under two hours. Our pre-class homework task was to wrap the cotton cording with the fabric. That took me five hours. I kid you not. Thank goodness baseball season had started so I had something to distract me during the five long hours of fabric wrapping. And the Cubs won, so that was a bonus.

Open for business

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The next day I had a definite pain in the back of my shoulder. I was sure it came from me holding my left hand and shoulder in pretty much the same position for that five-hour period, holding up the cord while I wrapped it with fabric using my right hand. As I knew where the pain originated, I didn’t overreact and think I was nearing the end of my sewing days so soon.

Yes, we have bananas!