Fabric Bowl Gift

At quilt camp we are assigned a "secret sister" to make a gift for. I made a red fabric bowl to decorate my secret sister's red and white sewing room. These are the photos I took along the way to show how it's done.

Sewing the base rounds

Making the turn to start building the sides

Building the bowl around the sewing machine

Finished bowl with little side handles

I have made many fabric bowls for gifts in the past (read more about it here and here), but this is the first bowl I've made with little handles. I'm not sure how well they will hold up over time, but they sure are cute.

A big thank you to my friend Maria who taught me how to make these bowls. And a shout out to my wonderful secret sister Susan who has been such an inspiration in my life for many years. I was happy to be able to make a special gift for her and fill it with some treats.

Hand made Christmas gifts

Photo Calendars for the family from 2010

I have always made Christmas gifts for my nieces and nephews to remind them of how much I love them. I could go out and buy them all gift cards, but I am loathe to do it.  I feel strongly that I want to maintain the tradition of hand made gifts. Over the years I have made pillows, pillowcases, fabric bags, luggage tags, photo calendars and mug mats.
The inspiration for the gift usually comes to me at some point in December, and then I work like crazy to finish them before December 25th. I know that is how it goes and I'm used to it. Each year as I repeat my tradition, I enjoy it more, and stress about it less. It always gets done!

This year I decided to make little fabric bowls from my brother's shirts. I wrote about deconstructing his shirts in this blog post earlier this year, and I felt the time was right for me to be able to create something with this fabric. 

I cut the shirts into 1" strips, wrapped the fabric around clothesline cording, and created fabric bowls. (You can read more information about making the bowls here.) I had a bit of an issue with the thread tension when making the first bowl - it was a terrible mess. I had to really fiddle with the sewing machine settings to fix the tension. 

This is how the thread should look on the outside of the bowl. Once that problem was solved, the rest of the bowls were built easily.





I made one flat mat to send in the mail to a good friend of my brother's and hope it will be a happy surprise.

The gifts for the nieces and nephews are bowls made from my brother's shirts, and they are filled with much love and many happy memories. Altogether I wrapped 100 feet of cording to make these bowls! Here's the group of them all ready to wrap!
Did you make some gifts for Christmas this year? 

Fabric Bowls

Have you ever made a fabric bowl? 
At quilt camp last year I learned the technique from my friend Maria. This is the first bowl I made. 

It was challenging for me to catch on to the technique at first, and then it was really fun. Maria recommended reading the book "It's a Wrap", which I found inspiring.  Also, Ami Simms has a neat video on her website (click here) and a great step by step tutorial (click here).
I made one bowl last year, and then at quilt camp this year I decided to make another one, but didn't get started until recently. 
Bowl making eats up scraps - it uses strips between 1/2" and 3/4".

Here are my supplies.
Cording and fabric scraps are all you need! This shows the beginning of creating the base. I didn't make the big X through the base like Ami recommends, but I think it would be a good idea, especially if you are making a big bowl.

Then you curve the shape to build the sides of the bowl. It starts to take on a life of it's own, and it is exciting to see the bowl begin to grow.

This is how it looks on the inside. 
I stitched a few charms on the inside, facing north, south, east and west. 
I really like the earthy feel of it.




Then, I decided the bowl needed a lid, so I made another

bowl and tried to make it a little flatter, but it didn't work the way I envisioned it. 
I tried to moulded the lid a bit to make it look a little more "lid-like".  I think the wooden button is the perfect touch to finish the bowl.
I'm afraid that I am addicted to bowl making now. I'm sure you'll be seeing more of them on my blog in the future!