Recently a friend demonstrated how to make fabric twine. I watched but didn't pay too much attention ... a couple of days later happened (!) to come across instructions (see here, includes a video) and had a play.
A few pieces of abandoned hand dyed fabrics ripped into roughly one inch strips ...
... and rather too quickly had a large ball of twine.
Days later had whipped up a bowl.
How the bowl was created ...
Using a wide and long zigzag sewed the strips together in a circular shape. I used a large jeans needle (100/16) that sewed easily through all the layers.
To start the bowl shape, tilted the piece as I sewed.
To add a handle, held the twine away from the edge for a couple of centimetres, stitched and then rejoined on the other side and continued stitching.
The trick is to evenly place the handle on the other side.
To shape the base, use a similar sized dish and iron the base and the edge. The ironing flattens the twine and seems to hold the shape quite well.
Now on to the next project, this time with a more controlled colour scheme.
Here I posted about my freemotion quilting samples. While making them I also created a mini quilt sampler.
I'd sorted some hand dyed fabric that I'd purchased ages ago on Trademe (NZ's version of ebay) and had never used mostly because the fabric was quite flimsy and the colours a little light.
For the initial piecing of the front used gentle curves then the back with straight piecing. Then the back became the front!
For each segment a different quilting pattern was used with varying threads.
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| back |
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| closer look |
One of my favourites is the fill in the slim white piece.
While I could keep this as a sample it is also the right size for a neonate quilt or maybe a large cushion.
What to do with less than successfully dyed fabric? over print of course!
I was inspired by Catherine Parkinson's blog entry (see here) where she has a great tutorial for making quilted pouches.
The original pieces of dyed fabric were interesting colours but rather washed out and not very appealing. Using a few stencils, a selection of textile paints, Golden acrylics (with fabric medium) they were transformed into ...
add a bit of quilting, a bit of sewing ...
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| selection of clutches |
To shape the base, use a similar sized dish and iron the base and the edge. The ironing flattens the twine and seems to hold the shape quite well.
