Latest Projects

From the Ellicott City Sew-Vac Sew Fair in November, I learned to make fabric bowls using the stiff and tough kind of interfacing.  The lady demonstrating these showed how you can use machine quilting to make the texture more interesting.  I thought it would be a good way for me to practice machine quilting.  They say if you practice machine quilting for even just ten minutes a day for six months you will acquire the desired control and skill.  Or begin to.

Here are some projects.  I did though I only quilted one and didn't get pictures of it after having quilted it.  Forgot.

It was fun piecing this together inside the bowl, cutting strips of different widths, fitting them together, finger pressing seams down before sewing, working the fabric, establishing rapport with it as I made it curve up and down the sides yet link to it's mates.  One of the fabric artists at the Sew Fair called this making the fabric "mind" like making children mind.  That was cute and we all laughed.  But I prefer to think of it in the win win model of establishing rapport.  More Zen-like for me.

So the basket above got quilted in the pebbles style but I forgot to take pictures and gave it to a friend, filled with examples of my first two batches of homemade soap each individually wrapped up with rustic brown bags and tied off with either twine or vintage fabric ribbons I'd bought at thrift stores over the last couple of years during my travels.

And the baskets below I haven't quilted yet.  This blue one in the picture below needs to be reworked before I quilt it.  The small circle on the bottom is a little off center.  I plan to pull those threads and re-attach it, then quilt it with the machine using wavy, swirly lines inspired by the fabric on the outside.

And this bowl, below, was the first one I did and actually probably turned out the best.  I liked it as it was and was afraid to ruin it by quilting it.  I didn't trust my beginner skills and this is ironic but probably not that uncommon among other budding artists, or any other new endeavors.  How do you learn if you don't try?  And the whole reason I started working on these fabric bowls was just that it would give me fun, small projects where I could practice machine quilting rather than just doing pieces of scraps in a quilt sandwich.

 This one I'm leaving in my friend's condo in Ocean City, MD.  I am putting some of my homemade soaps in it for her as well.  Over the next few years I hope to make more of these bowls and more different kinds of soaps.  They will all make nice gifts.  I have to stop worrying about whether people will like them, whether the soaps will just get thrown away unused and whether the bowls will end up in the trash or at a thrift shop.  I see so many homemade items in thrift shops.  Most deserve being there.  I keep telling myself not to worry.  My stuff may end up there too but I'm still on my journey of creation.  I am evolving.  My work is evolving.  What do I care what happens to the steps along the way? It's OK if they fall away after I've moved on.