Joy in Blue

Tuesday night at Fiber Art Fusion, Lynn guided us through the construction of a rope vase, a wrapped rope vase. I have had a great time making naked rope bowls. I still find that to be meditative. Lynn's tips for wrapped rope vases led to great fun and new directions in these sculptural makes.

My rope is wrapped with batik strips about 3/4 inch wide (a good activity for watching the news, if you can stand it). I used three different pieces of batik from the stash. There is one red linen strip in the bottom. A glue stick is used to secure the edges at the transitions and then when you zig-zag over it, it becomes very secure.

The first surprise was that when the direction of the curve changes, people-who-know-what-they-are-doing make a separate piece. Then the pieces are sewn together by hand! In the above picture, I'm making the upper section of the vase, the part where the vase opens.

So this piece has two sections that are sewn together where they meet. I like that it created a sharp angle in the piece. But of course it has me thinking of ways to create a smoother transition. And it has me thinking of ways to add some hand-stitch accents. And it has me thinking of combining the wrapped rope with naked rope...