Rainbow Containers

 I had fun making these. I've had the dyed cord for about a year and decided today to do something with them. The taller one is about 5 inches tall and the wider one is 8 inches at the longest dimension.

I had a bit of an idea of what I wanted when I started. For this one I was thinking of pencils. I can't get it to have straight sides but this is pretty close.

I have a container similar to this near my sewing machine. In it I put all of my little notions that I need regularly...scissors, seam ripper, seam roller, magnifying glass, rotary cutter...well you get the idea, so I thought I'd make another one. Don't know who they're for yet, but I like them.

And now for something completely different....

Though I have many quilt tops waiting to be sandwiched and quilted, I'm am veering off in another direction. I'm going to make a Bali bowl. You can see that this fabric has stick figures drawn on it. I'm not very enamored of them, so cutting into strips and wrapping around a cord will go a long way to disguising them. I love the colors of the fabric (minus the drawings) and I think this will be a lovely bowl.

Has anyone out there made one of these before? I just cut all the fabric, sewed it into strips and pressed it. When I wrapped it around the cord I bought (7/32" cotton cord) it was way too wide. I did a test of another fabric and cut it to 2" instead of 2 1/2" and that seems more like the picture on the pattern. If you've made one, did the same thing happen to you or do I just have extra skinny cord?  You can see in the picture below (if you click to enlarge it) that the fabric wrapped way around and had lots left over.

I'm thinking of going out and finding fatter cord to try, because I sure don't want to go back, iron all that fabric flat, trim it and then fold and iron it again.