A Beautiful Bowl

Over the past 3 or 4 weeks a project for my City and Guilds course has been sitting on my table, stuck in "Kathy has no motivation land". The inspiration for the piece were leaves that had been caught in cobwebs on the back of a wooden patio chair. I planned, I cut and pre-assembled, but the fabric just sat on my table. I had zero motivation to do anything with it for weeks.

Then, two days ago, while I was waking up, I realised that my initial idea was really not very interesting - it had no movement - it was static and that wasn't how I wanted this particular piece to be.

It was at that moment that the motivation came roaring back. Within hours I was at my machine (yes, machine dear readers - it's a requirement of the course to do free machine embroidery which I admit to really liking!).

The resulting bowl captures the movement of leaves from a pile to that delightful swirl we all know happens in the wind during autumn.

Using a product called Solvy, I placed the wool leaves I'd cut out using my pinking shears, carefully in a swirly kind of circle. I set my machine up for free motion embroidery and was off, catching the leaves with the silvery thread as I stitched a cobweb.

Above is a photo of what it looked like when I was finished stitching. Not very pretty, I admit. Can you see the circles and spokes that I stitched to make the cobweb? No self respecting spider would be happy with this, but I was!

I trimmed the Solvy so I had a circle and rinsed the piece under warm water. Then I draped it carefully over a bowl on top of a plastic container, shaping the piece carefully against the bowl. It dried overnight.

The next morning, even before I made my first cup of coffee, I removed the bowl and took a look - it had turned out exactly as I hoped! I took some photos and especially like this one in black and white - it highlights the negative space.

Here is the bowl lit from underneath as it sits in a plexiglass box where it will be displayed.

I've sent all the photos off as well as photos of my sketch book pages (inspiration, process, time, costs, etc.) to my tutors. Here's hoping this one is accepted as well! Either way, I am really chuffed with the result!