The Picnic Basket Gets a Makeover

Only a couples days before Dragon*Con, I found out that I was invited to show my picnic quilt at the Steampunk Exhibition. I decided it would be fun to set up a picnic scene on the floor of the exhibition, but when I looked at the picnic basket, it just looked too plain. With so little time (school had also just started that week), I should have left well enough alone, but I have trouble doing that. So, using a pattern that was really meant for embroidery from Urban Threads, I traced a design onto the lid of the basket. Then I used the wood burning tool to go over the traced lines (which, by the way, were not as clear as they should have been). I was really unhappy with the results. The design looked sloppy. The apartment and I smelled like a campfire.



I noticed some rough edges caused by the burning, so I got out a piece of sandpaper to rub at them, and scratched the basket lid pretty bad. I could undo the scratch, so I just put scratches all over the lid to give it a more worn, rugged look. I hated it! There are no close pictures of it at that point, because I was so unhappy with it.

As you can see, I stuffed it into the back corner of my display to make it less obvious.



I have finally had time to fix it.

Over the weekend I sanded it down.



I went over all the lines in the design with the Dremel, which did a far better job than the wood burner. Then refinished it with red mahogany wood finish and clear polyurethane.



It's not perfect, but I'm much happier with it now. I had never used the Dremel for wood engraving like this before and now that I kind of know what I'm doing, I want to try more.


For more about the picnic basket click here.