Container full of inspiration

I am continuing to inch forward in my City and Guilds' patchwork course.  For a recent assessment piece, my task was to design and construct a container based on something architectural.  I decided to use as my inspiration architectural elements from the Shaker Village in Canterbury, New Hampshire -- I lived near there and visited it often as it was a fascinating and beautiful place.  So I started thinking about the white clapboard buildings I love, the brightness of fall leaves against the white buildings...

And the lines of the picket fences and granite posts...

And that got me thinking about the beautiful wooden boxes for which the Shakers are famous...

So so working with all of those ideas, I made a fabric oval container. I used stitch-and-flip piecing techniques for the inner and outer walls of the box; and I machine stitched and then painted leafy branches hanging down.

I decided this looks rather nice holding my small collection of wool roving!

I'm not heading into making more of these, but it was a very satisfying project to put together elements that were meaningful to me and make them into an object.