I hope that you are all enjoying the change in the weather, as I write this the sun is shining and the birds are tweeting. Rain is forecast for later but we can't have everything can we.
On my last post I showed you a picture of a piece of fabric from Hillary's Blinds Country Retreat fabric range. They have been running a Country Craft Competition - to cut, stitch and blog. I have accepted their challenge to make something from it, it took me a while to work out what I wanted to make...
A bag? An owl? A doorstop? all these were good ideas but I wanted something that I could use afterwards, so what do I need?
A bowl to put the small balls of wool into when I am teaching - what a good idea.
Let me share how I did it -
Items required:
1m of fabric
Washing line
pins, scissors
Sewing machine
Firstly cut up the fabric into 1" strips.
Wrap the fabric around the washing line as in the picture
Then start to twirl them round, securing with pins.
Place the twirl under your sewing machine foot, it should just about fit, then using a zigzag stitch sew over the curves, sewing the strips together. The settings on my machine were 4.5 width and 1.5 length, but experiment if unsure as you need the stitches to catch both parts of the wrapped line.
Continue to wrap the fabric around the washing line - I found it helped to pin the joins between strips as it stops the fabric unravelling itself.
As you wrap it around continue to sew the strips together until it is the size you want the bowl base to be, I made mine 9.5" across.
When you are ready to come up the sides of the bowl, turn the base upright as you sew the next round on. The tighter the angle the steeper the bowl sides will be, I went for as near to 90 degrees as possible. It looks a bit funny at first, but will come together the further up the sides you go.
If you want handles on the sides of the bowl, lift a length of wrapped line and stitch over this then re attach when your handle is long enough. I lifted a 4.5" strip and then left a space of 3" before reattaching it to the sides, see the picture below:
When your bowl is finished, cut the washing line, leaving a length of fabric to cove the end. Wrap the fabric to the end of the washing line and then back on itself, Sew to the bowl either by hand or by machine.
When you've finished just trim up any loose strands from the fabric, fill and use.
Ta Dah!
I quite like the way that the poppy design has splintered, but all the lovely colours still shine through.
But of course none of this is possible without the very special supervisory skills of Scoobie who took up station in his box on my worktop. Bless.
Happy Crafting everyone and watch out for the next post when I will be unveiling this year's Craftbomb event. Hope you are all excited, I can't wait its going to be epic...
=^.^=
