Fabric Bowl on a snowy day

Good afternoon,

On a snowy day here in Calgary, again … we’ve had snow almost every day of the week, everything is white and the snow keeps piling up, despite the fact that Spring has arrived!

I worked on a fabric bowl today, which I had never made before, despite that I’ve seen dozens of them made.  One of the ladies I work with lost her brother a few weeks ago, and is coming back to work next week, so we decided to have something nice waiting for her when she gets back.  We went to the Body Shop and bought some lovely bath salts, moisturizing cream and a diffuser.  We were going to buy a basket, but I decided to try making a fabric bowl instead.

Here are the steps I followed, as I “made” the top fabric.  First, I cut a 14″ square of muslin to use as the base, adhered Wonder Under to it, peeled the paper and placed some larger pieces of fabric as the first layer.  I used green and some blue pieces leftover from paper piecing projects:

I also used yellow strips, leftover from the tuffet I made at Christmas time.  It’s so much fun going through the leftover basket I keep under my cutting table …  Here’s the first layer of fabric:

I added more fabric until the entire surface was covered, some pieces overlapping

Then, I took some leftover yellow strips, and with the rotary cutter, cut them horizontally, vertically and diagonally across, very randomly, to create confetti.

I do that quite often with leftover smaller pieces, and place them in a glass jar, to keep for other projects.

To the fabric with the first layer of confetti, in yellow I added some confetti from the jar, with greens and reds.  Also added some purple bit and pieces.  Then added the following:  Angelina and some silk threads by Treenway in oranges,

Next, I placed a layer of Esterita Austin’s Mistyfuse and a layer of lime green tulle; took it to ironing board and pressed it all under a teflon sheet.  This is what it looks like:

Once that was all fused together, I used a variegated yellow and orange thread to quilt an overall curvy diagonal grid.  Trimmed, and following the instructions in Linda Johansen’s “Fast Fun & Easy Fabric Bowls” completed my first one.

And the back

Now I can truly say they are very addictive.  As soon as I finished this one, I wanted to make another one; of course, I like it so much that I don’t want to give it away!

If you’ve never made one, I encourage you to give them a try.  These are simple to make if you just use two pieces of fabric, instead of making your own, and I believe that without that added step, you could probably finish one in a couple of hours or less, especially if you don’t do any quilting.  Great ideas for a quick gift.

Thanks for visiting … and hope you keep quilting.

Ana