Fabric Bowls

Needing a break from the "Dear Jane" triangles, I decided to make a few gifts. I had seen a fabric bowl, probably on a blog, that was beautiful and wondered why mine were not as nice. I realized I made mine with old scrap fabric, old & ugly fabric equals old and ugly bowls. My large piece of hand dyed fabric that was drip dyed offered a multicolored option. I was not going to use it for any thing else, and it would probably sit around collecting dust, so I might as well use it. I boldly cut it into 1" bias strips, from the middle of the fabric, where the colors were clearest. A supply of cotton clothesline had been hard to find, most rope is now polyester or some other plastic. Yea, "Big Lots" had some, cheap too. I don't recall what diameter it is, I threw away the packaging, but it is substantial.

The bright colors are green, yellow, orange, rust and a little blue and raspberry, a lot of secondary colors as the dyes blended when wet.

I made the first one round, with two handles. My good Brother sewing machine had trouble with the thickness, I tried a new denim needle, different tensions, different pressure on the foot, and still it kept skipping stitches. My cheap, take along Brother machine had no problem with the thread or thickness of the clothesline, go figure. It stitched up very quickly, with a multicolored Star brand cotton thread, in a wide zig zag stitch.

Getting fancy with the second basket was tricky, I made several loops along the edge, then ran a row across the top of the humps. Two more rows finished it off. It has a nice open feel to it, but is kinda wonky.

I tried to go rectangular with the next one. It was difficult to square up the corners, I pinched it square, but it left a tiny triangular gap in each corner. Then bringing up the sides was tricky to keep it from flaring out.

I am giving a basket to each of the ladies who helped to create it, at our tie dye play day.

I am linking this to Nina-Marie's "Off the Wall Friday" click on the badge to the right, and see what other talented textile artists are doing.