Fabric Wrapped Rope Bowl

Complete with threads hanging off.

Benta and Janine challenged me to tackle fabric wrapped clothesline bowls.
I dreamed about it.

A red, white & blue bowl....

Actually, they didn't challenge me. They just thought about it. lol

This is how I start my bowls. I wrap it tight into a spiral and push straight pins in to secure.
This particular rope is a cheap one -- $5 for 100 feet, which will make a good sized bowl. It's cotton braided around a styrofoam core. I didn't have any problems sewing on it but I did use a size 14 needle. Anyhoo, my pins won't pierce the styrofoam so I insert them just enough to grab the cotton bits. The pins help to keep the spiral flat while starting the sewing.

I also put a spot of Fraycheck on the end so it doesn't 'fluff' up. You could use any glue.

I make my spiral about 2 inches in diameter and then zigzag around in tight circles and even going back over the initial circles twice and then start going round and round. It's important to have the tail come off on the right hand side so you can zigzag in a continuous spiral.

 I really didn't want to mess with strips of fabric, getting tangled trying to wrap the cording.
And I was right. It is a bother.

So, in my dreams the other night, my bowl was designed with three rounds each of red, white & blue. With the rest of the bowl being the natural cotton clothesline.

I robbed my scrap basket - no real fabric was harmed in the making of this bowl. However, blue became turquoise, because there is no other color of blue in my scrap basket.

And just plain white up to my fabric strip colors felt wrong, so I switched threads and bobbin and put some red into the bottom of this bowl when the base was still flat.

 I really like my knot finish on this bowl too.   Three stripes, three knots?

 Overall, I like this bowl.    I'm not in love with it though.

It feels unwieldy big. And the contrast between the natural white and the fabric colors is more intense. Just using thread feels more modern and trendy.

I do like how the handles were even set off the top.


I can't say that I'm done with these bowls. They are amazingly fast and give such awesome results. They feed my need to make a craft in my small amount of free time. This fabric wrapped bowl took just over two hours. Just using thread is half the time. Big bang for my creativity.


I still need to trim thread tails and this bowl will go on the completed pile.

 My friend in Japan sent me an awesome t-shirt: SEW Elaborately Days - complete with vintage sewing machine.

Last, but not least, Fabric sale tomorrow in the church parking lot (??!!).
I'm gonna take my bike (3 miles into town) so I can behave myself.
With my tiny biking backpack.

hahaahahahahahahahahaha.

Shibori Fabric Museum

Wow.
I don't recall how I stumbled on this, but if you like to sew, to create, put this on your short list for amazing things to experience in Kyoto.

Shibori means manipulating the fabric from design to finish in the dyeing process.

This piece has been tied off in thousands of tiny circles. By hand, you could create 300 knots a day.

A machine similar  to tying flies (fishing) is used to up your productivity to 3000 knots/day.

300 knots on the above piece measure about 6" x 1.5".

The piece above has been tied and also dyed.

You can carefully rip out the knots in seconds, revealing the tiny eye squares.

Which we were able to do - ourselves!

Our guide - oh - bear in mind, we paid 500 yen to come to this museum - brought over samples for us to not only touch but rip apart!

There are many ways of tying off the fabric. From plastic tube to tiny string knots.

The master designer sketches the design, makes a stencil, applies design to fabric.

He then makes marks on the design for where particular knots go to create the finished design.

The fabric then goes to the knot tyers, then to the dye guy.

When the knots are ripped out, -where the dye did not reach -the design is revealed.

Sneaking photographs here.
This is the spring wall mural.
Made up of maybe ten 36"wide panels.

Please click on each photo to make larger. This is absolutely stunning in the workmanship.
2yrs7mo to create.

And they have the Summer, Autumn, & Winter murals as well. (8 yrs altogether).

They have another mural on display of the Kyoto mountains - maybe 270' view.

Absolutely breathtaking.
Sorry - no photos allowed.

The dyeing accuracy is handled by masters. Definitely not tie dye bulls-eyes.

You can try on a shibori - dyed kimono with an obi.
Such fun.

The reason they can rip apart knots is because of old stock upstairs that was never dyed.
Less valuable than modern shibori with less knots.

I'll post links when I get home.
They do have a Facebook page.