
Quilted Bowls Session 5: Dress it Up with Edges & Finishes
Heather ThomasDescription
This final session is all about ways to finish the edges of the bowl to dress it up. Heather will demonstrate top stitching and zigzag techniques and discuss how to bead the edges or add a couched fiber. She will finish with laundering and use instructions.
So except for trimming away a few little traveling threads and things like that, our vessel is essentially done. I can dress it up more if I want to, in fact, I think I'm going to do a little bit of an edge treatment on it or I can leave it exactly like it is. On this one here, I decided to couch a fiber down between the two colors. Basically, it's covering that raw edge. To couch a fiber down, you simply lay the fiber where you want it to be, a little bit at a time, when you put it under your machine and you stitch it down with a zigzag.
That zigzag should be just wide enough to cover your fiber and spread out far enough that it doesn't cover up too much of your fiber. You can see that zigzag out here. It's a pale yellow zigzag, hopefully you can see it. It's very narrow and it's pretty far apart. All it's doing is just holding that in place, not covering up that fiber.
Both of these, however, are beaded. And if you've never beaded before, it's important to know that you need to use beading thread to do this. That thread is called Nymo, N-Y-M-O. Sometimes you can use Silamide also but Silamide can't be found in lots of colors. And then Nymo is actually a better thread.
Nymo was purchased in the bead section at craft stores or at bead stores. And it's important that you use this Nymo. It's about 100 times stronger than hand quilting thread, it's really strong and it won't break nearly as often. It can still break, however. When I look at this one that has been out of my possession for quite some time, I borrowed it back from somebody, I can see that it's missing a strand of beads right here.
It's the only place I saw it. Whereas this one is in my position and it's been missing a strand of beads right here for quite some time. Now the reason why it's only missing a strand of beads is because every time I put on a strand of beads, I tie a knot. Move to where I'm gonna add the next strand, tie a knot, put the strand on, tie knot. Move to where the next strand is gonna, tie a knot and so on.
So, to kind of go through that a little better for you, I'm gonna have the Nymo with a knot on it, I'm gonna come through the edge of this vessel, put all my beads on. The very last bead, I'm gonna pull to the side and I'm gonna go back through all those beads. And when I pull that thread all the way through, it's gonna suck that bottom bead down on there. And then I'm going to tie a knot, I'm not gonna cut my thread or anything. I'm gonna travel to where I want my next strand of beads and do the same thing.
Come back up through that strand of beads, tie a knot, travel, and I'm gonna keep doing that. And every time I add a strand of beads, I tie a knot. Therefore, if one gets pulled off, the rest don't go with it. If you don't tie knot, all of the beads are gonna come off and come loose once you tear one off. So this vessel right here is about 18 years old.
It's losing one strand of beads. This is the same age, so not a big deal. The way this one is done is the exact same way in strands. But I do a strand and then I travel to where I wanted to do a loop and I just put on beads and then stitch where I wanted the loop to end and then travel to where I wanted a strand and went back and forth. So it's got loops and strands on both sides.
It's really kind of a cool thing. But I'll tell you that, the vessel probably took me three hours to make and it probably took me 20 hours to bead. So you have to kind of decide how worth it is, worth it it is to do that kind of beading. But for right now, what I'm simply going to do is, I'm going to just put a zigzag around this outer edge of this to add just a little bit of interest to that outside edge. And I'm gonna do it with a contrasting color of thread, green.
Because green is the most dominant other color, other than the violets that are in here. The main reason I do that is twofold. Anytime you put something on the edge that is going to build that edge up, it's gonna add more stability to the edge but mostly because I just wanna kind of bring that green out in that print. I'm not going to satin stitch it but I probably will go around it more than once, I'm not sure. I'll do it once first and see if I like it.
I've got my zigzag stitch, stitch or spent, excuse me, set on its widest width and, but the stitches are relatively close together. They're set on a two, two out of five whereas my width is 5.5, which is the widest it's going to get. And I'm gonna do this so that when the needle comes down on the right hand side, that it comes off the edge of the vessel. So I'm gonna start with that needle on the right-hand side, put it down so that the vessel is right on the edge there. And it's gonna kind of wrap around that edge rather than piercing through.
And I'm gonna work relatively slow because I wanna make sure that I'm keeping that thread wrapped around that edge rather than piercing through that edge. So I'm almost through with that first go round and I'm gonna take a look at it and see if I like it just as it is or if I wanna do it multiple times. And as I'm looking at it, I see that I, it's not enough for me. So I'm gonna go ahead and bring my zigzag a little bit closer together and I'm gonna go round it again. Okay, so now I've gone around it twice and I'm really liking that green edge.
So, we're gonna do it one more time. And I'm gonna make my stitch length even closer together but I'm not gonna go all the way to satin stitch. Okay. I'm gonna back stitch and this baby is done. I think that green all around that outside edge is just perfect, just enough visual interest there.
If I'd added a whole bunch of fibers or something like that, it kind of might've taken away from the beauty of that fabric there. And I think that's great. I also think this is gonna make an excellent napkin holder. So, it's gonna be sitting on my dining room table with napkins in it. Anyway, if you're into loosey goosey and you enjoyed watching this process and you were like, "Oh, thank goodness, I don't have to worry about perfection or anything like that.
I can't wait to jump into these bowls." Great. If you watch this video and you thought to yourself, "Oh my God, she just kinda throws crap on there and she doesn't even pay attention and she's just, oh, I don't know if I could do that." You don't have to do it my way. You can do it your way. That's what's so cool about this technique. So if you wanna cut this square perfectly the same size as that square and you wanna put a strip of fabric in here that's exactly the same width as a strip of fabric that you put out here.
And then you wanna make sure that these are all the same exact length and they're set a short one then a long one, then a short one, then a long one so that they fit on both sides perfectly, you can do that. You can make it however you want to make it. This is your baby. And now you have the skillset of how to form that vessel. What you do in decorating, it is all up to you.
You can have all sorts of fun. I know that once you've made one, you won't be able to stop.
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