Quilted Bowls Session 4: Quilting the Bowl

So I'm going to now have to choose basically a quilting schematic for my vessel. How am I gonna quilt this particular piece? This is a similarly formed, shaped, and decorated piece to this piece. Again, like I said earlier, this one I simply stitched in the lines of the printed design, then did a stipple, and then did wavy, curvy lines on the outside edge. I think I'm gonna do something similar in here. However, I think I'm going to stipple in my negative space in here and kind of as I'm doing that surround my major shapes. Then I think I'm gonna do the lines in this, the solid purple here. And then in my outside edge, I'm gonna do a tiny little stipple. So you'll be able to see, so I'm gonna repeat the stipple from in here to the stipple out there, and in between I'll have a very linear design. Now, this, I'm gonna be stitching it from the inside, and this is going to be the inside of my vessel. My outside is going to look totally different. Now, if I get done and think, "Oh, well, I wish that the stitching showed, followed the design on the outside," I simply push the vessel in the opposite direction and turn it right side out, and then the stitching is on the outside. I'm gonna show on both sides, but it's gonna follow the design only on one side, is what I'm trying to get you to see. So I'm gonna start by putting the vessel underneath the machine and positioning it where I wanna start my stitching. Bring my bobbin thread up through the top so that I can knot off. And then I'm simply gonna start my stipple. I'm working with a open-toed foot because it's just easier for me to see. So to knot off, I'm simply gonna take a couple stitches in place, almost in place, I should say. Okay, now I'm just gonna start stippling and surrounding the circle. So I'm gonna go around the circle. I'm gonna go ahead and cut this thread because I don't want it getting in my way. And now I'll start stippling. I'm using a tone, a very pale tone of violet to stitch with on both sides. And now I'm gonna go ahead and work myself into this corner and get this whole portion in here stitched. I'll go around the outside of the circle. I'm gonna come in and stitch this little purple circle. Put a bit of stipple in there 'cause everything that's purple is gonna get stippled. Or I should say everything that's not part of a design is gonna get stippled. Go around that floral design that's in there. Stipple all around it. Now, any time I have to renegotiate that bowl, I'm just gonna renegotiate that bowl. Flatten it out where I need it to be flattened so I can get in there and stitch. Go around that dark purple. So you can see how easy it is to get into that indentation of that corner. It's not that hard. Go around that bowl a bit, around that circle I mean. And I'll come back in and stipple in that negative space. Go around this circle here. Stipple in the negative space. Time to reposition, so I can see where I'm going mostly. Gonna outline this design. Outline the rest of this half circle here. And then back to stippling in all that negative space. Go around that little circle. Okay, now I've positioned myself so I can travel. I have all this stitching in here that I need to do in this light purple. So I'm gonna come in here and outline this green of this design and then stipple in that area now. And then I'll go back in and do that stippling in all that negative space. Outline that green while I'm stippling, that little green circle. There always comes a time when you have to then look and see what you've accomplished and what you haven't got done yet. So as I'm looking at this, I'm probably gonna wanna go in here and put some stitching in that light violet there and the light violet in here. I definitely need to do inside this circle still. But you're seeing what's happening is that where there is no stitch, it is raised to the surface more, and where there is stitch, it's flattened down more, and so we're creating this wonderful dimensionality to our vessel. Now I'm gonna be doing what's called traveling. So I'm gonna lift my needle up through the surface, and I'm not gonna cut the thread at all, and I'm simply gonna go over to where I wanna stitch. I'll knot off. I'll stitch. When I'm done in that little area, I'll knot off and go back to another area that I wanna get into, and I'll keep traveling. And after I'm done with all of it, then I'll go in and cut the thread. So I'm gonna move right over here. Put my needle down. Knot off. Stitch in that little area there. Stitch in this little area here. And that just highlights what's going on in that design, and that's what I really want it to do. We're gonna do this little area right here. There we go. Every once in awhile, you'll feel your vessel get stuck on something in your machine. And if that happens, just kind of move where your machine is. I've got my little traveling thread there caught, okay. Okay, now I'm gonna travel over to this circle. And I'll outline the inside of the circle and then stipple in the negative space. Knot off and determine what's left. And I think the only thing left now is these little two spaces here, and then we're ready to do our side walls. I'm gonna go ahead and knot off and pull the vessel out from underneath and trim some threads, get them out of the way. So what you can see is that I've got basically my negative space. The background to the designs is all stitched with a stipple. And I'm gonna cut these threads for my traveling all flush, just to get them out of the way. And the next thing I'm gonna do is I'm going to outline, or inline is really what I'm doing when it comes down to it because outlining would be on the outside edge, and what I'm gonna be doing is on the inside edge of my purple area. So you can see that in a second here, after I cut the rest of these threads, you can see that the design on the inside, of course, is not lining up with the design on the outside, but it still looks cool. You're still getting this superimposed design on there, and it still looks just fabulous. Okay, so the next thing I'm gonna do is I'm going to stitch right around this raw edge of this light purple, and then I'm gonna come in and stitch around this edge of the multicolored fabric, and then I'm gonna stitch lines in between here on this light purple. So that's the next portion of this quilting that's gonna get done. And the vessel is going to be up on its side for most of its time now. And you're gonna be doing a lot of angling around. Angle around. Angle down. And then reposition for this next side. I'll reposition, okay. And the reason I wanna do this kind of topstitching inside this raw edge is to keep it down 'cause the inside of the vessel gets more wear and tear when you use it, but also to give me something to quilt against when I go to quilt the long lines in this area. So I'm gonna knot off here, and I'm gonna jump up to this next edge, and I'm gonna stitch around it. That was just messy, but you'll never see it. Got a little portion of fabric here that I did not get down with the iron, so I'm gonna stitch over it quite slowly. Change my angle. So I've gone all the way around this inside edge here of the violet, and I've gone around this inside edge of the stripey fabric that we, or the strippy fabric that we put on the outside. And it doesn't matter which I do next, stipple the outside edge or put the lines in the inner edge. Because this is not like a quilt that's going to have a portion of it move, you don't have to worry about quilting in a row or in order. But I'm gonna go ahead and put the lines in this section here now. And as I'm doing this, I'm going to strive to put lines along any raw edges, so meaning wherever there is a new piece of fabric and there's a raw edge, I'm gonna try to get a line of stitching right there. Again, it's just gonna hold that fabric down a little bit better than if I don't do that. So we'll get ourselves in position. Bring our bobbin thread through from the back. Give ourselves a really good knot off. And just gonna be going up to this line that we stitched before and then down to the line that we stitched and then up and just back and forth. Now, when you get into that corner, you're gonna have to flatten that corner out a bit. I just wanna remove this thread so we don't stitch over it. So flattening that corner out a bit is gonna be a good idea. Interesting, I didn't do this last little portion of this top here, so I'm gonna do that real quick. And I'm simply gonna double back over it to get to where I was stitching. There we go. And back down and up. I have some traveling threads left from before that I'm just gonna remove so I don't stitch over them. They're just harder to remove if you've got stitch lines on top of them, so you might as well remove them when you come to them. Back to another corner. You see how I just kinda slow down a bit, get into that corner, get it flattened out as best I can. All right, so now we have that whole section done, all those wonderful stripey lines in here, and we get some great delineation or differentiation between that portion of the vessel and the bottom portion of the vessel, and it's provided not by color, but by stylization of the quilting. And now I'm gonna go back to my stipple, and I'm gonna stipple this outside final edge. And we're nearing our final corner and the end. Which is perfect since I just ran out of bobbin. Oh, no I didn't. For some reason, it started skipping a stitch, and it happened here at the very, very end. Oh, it is out of bobbin. I was gonna say maybe I got some iron-on adhesive not dissolved, but... So we're just gonna pretend that that last little bit is quilted. And here is our quilted vessel, our wonderful square vessel. This is the inside. This is the outside. And when we look at the outside, we will notice that our quilting does not necessarily line up out here the same way it does in here. If I am going to use this vessel in such a way that it is always full, I'll probably turn this so it's the other way out, so that the side where the stitching lines up with the print is showing. If I'm gonna be using it in such a way that it's not full, so maybe I decide just to put a candle in the middle with a little clear plate with a tall candle or something like that, then I'll leave it this way. But I can always just turn it this way if this is gonna be full of napkins anyway, and then the outside kinda lines up. So the very last thing we have to do talk about is any type of decoration we're gonna do. So I'm gonna give a little bit of thought to that, and we'll come back.