Fabric Bowls

After making a felt and scrim fabric bowl a few weeks ago I have been experimenting with alternative ways of stiffening fabrics. The water soluble fabric worked well and has produced a moderately stiff bowl but I am concerned that if it gets wet it will loose its shape and possibly its strength too.

As an alternative I have been experimenting with PVA glue (commonly used in schools for art classes and also known as wood glue).

Here is a bowl made from 4 layers of rainbow dyed scrim, machine embroidery for decoration and PVA glue.

A close up of the embroidered centre:

However, it is still quite malleable…

I would like to stiffen it some more, but am not sure how, some possibilities include threading coloured wires through the fabric or spraying with a diluted mix of acrylic medium but I’m not sure I really like either idea. Do any of you clever people have better /other ideas?

Machine Embroidery

The past couple of weeks I have have been fighting an infection and been feeling pretty grotty. All my great plans for felting over the long Easter weekend went completely out the window. After 2 days of napping and watching telly I was bored and needed something to do but didn’t think I could stand up for the lengthy periods that felting requires.

I came across this stunning photo of “Aisa” by Ebru Sidar on Deviant Art several months ago and thought it was so beautiful I saved the link.

This was my inspiration for some machine embroidery.

Here it is after the initial outline sketch:

And the finished and framed piece, it was really tricky trying to get a good photo without reflections in the glass.

A close-up of the stitching

Linking up to nina-marie, off the wall Friday