Why not give it a try?

Today is a snow day so I thought I would take the opportunity to not only update my blog but wish everyone a Happy Thanksgiving!  What I wanted to share in this entry is my first fabric basket with attached handles. What I have been making up until now are the built in kind. Recently I was browsing through a book about fabric bowls and there were several different types of decorative attached handles so I thought, why not give it a try?  I have some heat activated webbing that I use for the check book covers and thought, YES, this would be the perfect material to give the handles some shape.  I folded the ends of the fabric on each end over itself to keep the fabric from fraying. Next I inserted the webbing and  folded the fabric over it  and where it joined, I made another small fold over so that  there would be no raw edges. After applying the heat and making sure it was adhered properly,  I than stitched length wise down the handle at the center seam and then folded it in half in the other direction and pined  it to the bowl.  It was a bit of a chore getting all of that under the pressure foot since I wanted to stitch the front and back to the bowl at the same time, using a zig zag stitch.  It was at this point that I was VERY thankful for my new machine.  To my great relief, my machine stitched right though it all without missing a beat!   I am sure that this is just the start of me experimenting with different types of handles.  There are many handles in the book made out of covered rope.  I am really looking forward to trying that out also.  It didn't add that much extra time to taking the basket and I think it really dressed it up!