Hiiieeeeeeeeee! Sorry I haven't been active for awhile. Things have just been a little cray cray. Unfortunately it has totally affected how much time I could spend sewing as of late. Davey no sew, then Davey gots nothing to blog about. Before all the craziness set in I started a cool project in attempt to try new techniques and improve my sewing basics. This Quilted Fabric Bowl Tutorial by Geta Grama is amazing!!!! I remember when I saw this tutorial I was super impressed and thought it was so clever. I chose to do it now because I have desperately been dying to experiment with free motion quilting. I tried to do free motion quilting if you remember, but was unsuccessful because I didn't know how to properly set my sewing machine up to do it. Anyways that new technique combined with doing satin stitching (which I have been super interested in for some time as well) plus it has utility!! So big win win win win win all around. Anyways, like I said the tutorial is amazing and this was fun to do!
So I am trying to learn from my mistakes and one of those things I've learn is what I call the first pancake. Chefs’ use this term to describe how the first pancake is always a throwaway more of a way to test to see how hot the pan is. I'm using the term to say that I am going to try, from now on, to always do test run always. Until I’m a superhero level seamster man, I’m gonna try and never do a project unless I do a test run and experiment first. Like the stuffed animals I did recently, I would have done a much better stuffed fishies if I had done a one or two beforehand
Anyways that's a long way of saying because I knew this was gonna be a test run SO I choose to use this particular fabric and thread combination (Black with some white). I think the fabric is really beautiful - this green bamboo print. I had a lot of it I don't remember where I got it from, I think a leftover bin at Hancock. I always intended to use it for lining in a purse or handbag but because it had some stability and the only stabilizer I had was a medium I thought this would be good combo. I did all the quilting in black thread, but then had to switch to white and black only in the bobbin. Interesting effect none the less...
 | I don't remember……. because I started this project but only a month and a half ago……. I think I just looked at her pattern and just made my own by hand. I do not recommend you doing this. It was kind of problematic but it was kind of fun for me as a math guy to work through angles and such. Seriously though her pattern looks perfect and I'm going to use it next time. So here you can see my pattern, the stack of cut out pieces and the stack of stabilizer pieces. I don't remember what my reasoning was for not ironing the stabilizer on to the fabric first and then cutting it out... But that's what I’m gonna do next time. It turned out okay in the end. |
 | Here is a picture of what it looks like to do it that way and for you Type A's you probably don't want to see this picture. Nothing is perfectly aligned and all perfect, but this is how I roll people. I gots to be me! |
Now comes the free motion quilting of the pieces together back to back. I saved one of the pieces to do some preliminary free motion quilting. I tried this lotus style and a few others (like the hearts and the ivy and the circles) but I'm not very good at it. But now that I'm looking at it again my lotus it's pretty good, hmmm.....
Anyways, because I couldn't imagine doing that much quilting on a practice run I kind of came up with my own idea. NOW I'm not saying I invented this, I'm just saying this is what I thought up. If you know what this is called let me know, I'm just calling it spider webbing. I just go back and forth various angles and distance from other stitches. It's fine if it's easy. I didn't like it when I did all them and I wasn't sure if it looks good at this point.
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| Before I could start satin stitching the sides of all the pieces I really need to clean up and all the edges. So what I did is I took my template and cut in a half inch on each side. And then traced it on each of the pieces and cut them out. I don't know if you can do this for every free motion quilting pattern but it works for this one because the lines continue to intersect regardless of where you started them at. | ||
 | After that, I followed the rest of her instructions and I stitch them together the way she told me to and bingo bango! It’s a Quilted Fabric Bowl!!! Now because I didn't follow her pattern mine looks different than hers (of course) she has one additional side piece and hers are not as tall as mine. You can kind of see when you start to play with this overtime how the centerpiece determines how high of an angle the side pieces are raised up by |
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| Anyways, because mine is a little too floppy and my stabilizer wasn't super heavy duty, I decided to just try and continue to stitch together each of the side pieces. My thinking was that I can always take out the seam if it did not work out. So you can kindof see what I mean in the pictures of how I stitched up the two angles together all around the bowl | |
And what an amazing idea because look what it gave me!!!! I love it!!!!! It looks like a tulip. And the top naturally curls so I just ironed them a little bit to enhance their curl and it worked out perfectly. In fact I think it's very architectural in a way.
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What I will forever remember from the Quilted Fabric Bowl Tutorial:
- Uhmm…. I’m gonna make a million, in a gazillion different sizes! You watch.
- Perfect project to continue practicing free style quilting! ;)
- This takes A LOT of thread!!!!
- Seriously try this out sometime and see what you can do. I can’t wait to make more patterns and see what I can do!!
- A tighter, more dense, freestyle quilting pattern would improve stability.
- Satin stitching is great. I wish I could make my sewing machine make it so that their wider.
- And they make a great hat.
