
Quilted Bowls Session 1: Introduction
Heather ThomasDescription
In this session Heather introduces all of the products needed to create these bowls/vessels as will show several samples and step-outs for their creation. She will review several varieties of stabilizers and iron-on adhesives. Finally she will talk about choosing a shape and fabric selection as well as considering the type of edge you want for your first bowl.
So as we begin this exploration of making vessels, you're gonna need some particular supplies. And probably the most important thing is the stabilizer that we use. My favorite stabilizer to use is from Pellon, and it's called Timtex. It's kind of hard to find though. You can find Peltex much easier.
Peltex is simply a little thinner than the Timtex. If you're going to make a very large vessel, something this size or even larger, you must use the Timtex or two layers of Peltex. It needs that much stability. If you're making something smaller, these sizes or this size, the Peltex is fine. Timtex is still better.
And you only need one layer of the Peltex. The reason that Timtex is better, it's about twice as thick as the Peltex, but it has the same density so it's more, not any more difficult to stitch through. This product basically looks like stiff, white, heavy paper. It's a non-woven fiber. It's also very hard to find it without adhesive on it.
So this particular piece has had adhesive on one side and not on the other, but you can also get it with adhesive on both sides. Now this is a technique that uses adhesive. The problem is, is that when it's got adhesive already on it, that adhesive usually dries up and it's not very effective. And so our fabrics don't stick to it as well as we'd like it to, and you're gonna have to put it on your fabrics anyway. And the ones with the adhesive on are more expensive.
So might as well go for the one without the adhesive if you can find it. If you can't, buy one that only has it on one side. If you can't find that, buy the one that has it on both sides and you just deal with it and you use more adhesive. So you're also gonna need some iron-on adhesive. It needs to be a lightweight.
Don't do a heavyweight, don't do a craft bond. So anything that says lightweight on it. Mistyfuse is wonderful, lightweight Wonder-Under is great, lightweight Steam-A-Seam is nice, too. Anything that is lightweight. What we're asking that adhesive to do is simply hold things in place until we do our stitching.
So it doesn't have to be, you know, major, major sticky. You also need a natural fiber batting. I tend to use cotton, this is a cotton bamboo blend. One of the best battings for this technique is Warm and Natural, so if you've got that on hand, that's a great one, or you can go buy a craft size. The reason it's such a great batting for this technique is because it's very dense, and that denseness helps hold the shape of the bowl well.
Once you've made your decision about your products and you've gathered them together, your next decision is going to be what size and shape of vessel am I going to be making? Here I've got, my friends call this a boat shape vessel. It's an oval. And it's a great little vessel. It's wonderful to put your makeup in on your counter in your bathroom, put by your door for your keys and your dog stuff or whatever you need by the door.
It's just a great little shape. This is a square, and a very small square. Squares can get very large. You can do a rectangle also, and then this is a very large round. This started out about this big, and I used a massive dinner plate or a serving plate as my template for that.
Whereas this one started out much smaller and this one hasn't been stitched or finished. This is just in the ironed-on stage. It started out the size of a large dinner plate, and that's where I get my templates, from my kitchen. So I go and I find something that's a shape that I think I want to play with, trace it, and use that. This oval that is ready to be formed into the vessel was the lid to my oval roaster.
And so that's what I used for the template for this. And then this one is also ready to go, and it will be cut into a square, and a square vessel made out of it. So we're gonna be doing our quilting. Then we're going to be doing our placing of our decorative fabrics. And all of our fabrics need to have an iron-on adhesive on the back.
So I simply have a selection of fabrics that I keep on hand all the time for all of my iron-on projects. And these are some of those fabrics. So all of these have iron-on adhesive on the back of them, and they're ready to go. There's lots of options about how you want to decorate your vessel. So your vessel can be decorated using lots of little pieces of fabric, like these tiny little pieces, multiple colors.
This one's also small pieces, but the fabrics are much more similar to each other. Not as disparate as those are. These are vintage Japanese silks. And when you look at it really close you can see all the different fabrics, but from a distance it all kind of reads as one. It's just kind of nice.
Whereas this one is very highly specialized. It's all one fabric on one side. That fabric folds over to the inside. Another solid piece of fabric on the inside that I had stamped a design on with fabric paint. So it just really is featuring that stamp design.
Now of course, how you're gonna use your vessel might tell you how you want to decorate it. Because as soon as somebody puts something in the bottom of this vessel, the design doesn't show, which is fine. Some people just set these up as decoration and they don't really use them as bowls. So it just depends on how you plan on using. So once you've gathered all of your pieces together and you're ready to start stitching, we'll move on to our next segment and we'll build our base.
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