Can you say obsessed? I started working with my stash of holiday fabric. This is the basic square pattern but I made it smaller. The size called for in the book makes a pretty big bowl. I ran out of the gold thread I was using so this one has a different color thread along the top.

Another example of running out of thread partway through but it really works with this design. It takes a fair amount of thread to do one of these bowls. This is the alternate hexagon shape, also made smaller.

Another variation of the hexagon shape where you use a circle on the outside but a hexagon on the inside and cut the darts as for a hexagon. As you can see, these really do reverse although most of them look better one way than the other.

This one was a nightmare. First of all, it was made with canvas instead of the craft interfacing. That’s how to get the floppy corners. The book calls for two layers of canvas which I tried to fuse together but the fusing didn’t hold very well on the canvas so, as I was working, my textile sandwich (as she calls it) was coming apart in the middle. Also, the canvas shreds along the edges, so when I was doing the satin stitching around the top, I had to contend with strings of canvas everywhere and so the edge didn’t end up very smooth. On top of that, I was using this fancy gold thread as you can see. It didn’t like being wound on a bobbin very much and until I learned to lighten up the tension it kept breaking as I was sewing. Came out OK in the end though and I learned some things. The material doesn’t photograph very well because it’s shiny but it’s a beautifully elegant bowl.

My masterpiece. Isn’t it cute? This is the other circular pattern which is made with canvas. Having learned from the last one, I basted the two layers of canvas together instead of trying to fuse them. Then, once I’d trimmed my textile sandwich down to the final size, I did a line of zig zag around the top to keep the shedding to a minimum. Although you do cut through the stitches as you make the darts, the book recommends to cut and then sew each dart, one at a time, so there’s not much time for the stitches to unravel before they’re oversewn.

The other thing I learned about working with canvas is that it’s harder to pull the edges together when joining up the darts. The book has you start by joining the darts with zig zags and then going back over with satin stitch but it recommends that you start right off with the satin stitch once you’ve got the hang of it. That’s OK with the stiff interfacing but with canvas I recommend doing the zig zag pass first. It allows you to concentrate on the practicality of joining the edges on the first pass and worry about making it look pretty on the second.

I’m trying to restrain myself from making more bowls but they’re calling to me. It’s so much fun picking out two fabrics and a thread color and a shape and size and then seeing how it all comes out because they all seem to come out so nicely.