I woke up this morning to some scheduling challenges I did not foresee when I went to bed last night, so while I was disappointed that the day did not allow for me to begin work on felting my basket-of-flowers project, I was delighted that I finally got it all assembled.

The first technical challenge was joining the ring of flowers to the basket. The technical challenge of how to make the spacing as perfect as possible was exacerbated by a practical challenge: our puppy wanted to assist.

After 20 minutes of project and puppy juggling, I finally got a start on attaching the ring of flowers to the basket, and before an hour had passed, I had all of the flowers attached in a satisfactory fashion.

Here is one side of the bag to be:

and here is the other:

The next challenge was attaching the straps. As I mentioned in a previous post when I crocheted them they measured 69″. After dyeing them in Kool-Aid, they stretched out to a more generous 101″.

I decided that in this instance, best felting practices would require that the portion of the strap that was to run under bag should be sewn in place with a felt-able yarn with the hope that a more secure join would result.

As can be seen in this photo:

and this photo:

there is still a lot of strap left over.

One of the challenges of felting this bag will be managing the now exceedingly long straps during the process. My plan is to fold the straps (like the bellows of an accordion), and then run a cotton yarn or thread through the straps to hold the resulting pleats in place. This should allow the straps to felt along their length without inadvertently felting to each other or another part of the bag.

With everything that is going on at the moment, I don’t expect that I will be able to felt the bag until Monday, but in the meantime, I am happy to have gotten this far with my basket of flowers.