Fabric Coil Pots

There is a faint flicker of creativity in my brain at last   ( although perhaps I shouldn't mention it in case I frighten it away? ) - it has been quite a while since I actually felt inspired to explore some ideas. I think the continual feelings of exhaustion have a lot to do with it.

Anyway   . . .. . . . ..

This is a coil pot I made on the sewing machine a couple of months ago. I had dyed some fabric and didn't like this yellowy/green so decided to play with it on the pots as it wouldn't matter if it was all a disaster! Machine stitched pots are surprisingly easy - I first saw these when Helen Deighan was at Knit & Stitch some years ago. She'd made some big AliBaba style pots and also elongated them to make them into baskets & bags. I bought a kit to have a go and have since experimented with a variety of shapes.

I want to make some that are skinnier and have a more varied shape - I want them to be a bit more organic-looking and for them to distort a bit. I have found it difficult to make skinny coil pots on the machine. I have done the base by machine  with an invisible thread like this . . . .

and am now working on the shape by hand like this . . . . .

I want the pot to be quite a lot taller and for it to eventually lean over with a curve at the top. I'm planning to use photos of a lovely blue clematis printed onto inkjet-ready cotton then cut out, backed with batting and machine embroidered. The clematis flowers will be added to the outside along with some green cords meant to look like the stems.

To make the pot quite firm I have linked each circuit of stitches into the ones on the previous round. If I don't do this the pot gets a bit floppy. I've discovered that the thread makes a huge difference too. I have a lovely shade of green in a shiny thread that I was given - perfect colour but the shiny thread makes it slippery and the pot got seriously floppy so I am sticking with some ordinary cotton perle.

I learned how to do this from  Janet Edmonds  in her book '3D Textiles'. She shows how to do a figure of 8 type stitch that goes around the coils to join each layer together. There are ways to stitch more conventionally but I find that really hard on the hands.

If you never see another photo of this coil pot you'll know it hasn't worked!!