Rope Bowls

Inspired by SouleMama's rope baskets, I ordered some cotton rope and sewed up these bowls.

They are a quick and pretty easy craft project, perfect for instant gratification. Case in point: this rope arrived in the post yesterday evening, and here I am 24 hours later posting a finished project.

I ordered 4mm thick cotton cord because my sewing machine is a basic model and not suitable for denim. It handled this thickness fine, but I found it a little frustrating. Firstly, the lovely rope coils are squashed, and almost entirely flattened out of being by the stitches; and secondly, because as the bowl grows larger it gets quite floppy. A 6mm rope would be nicer. And sew up quicker!

I got unbleached rope because I wasn't planning to dye it and I like it looking more rustic. My home also has cream decor, not pure white.

I used white cotton thread and a stitch length set at 2, with a zig zag setting two notches less than the widest setting (yes, that is a scientific description of my zig zag settings!) It was harder than I realised to get the needle catching both sides of the coils. There are a lot of places that have air holes between the coils. I also had to do a LOT of lifting the presser foot and pivoting. This would be much faster with a machine with a needle up/down setting and a more automated presser foot. But I found the pivoting essential if I wanted to get a good size base to the bowl. If I pivot, I can make relatively flat coils, as soon as I let the machine run, I find the coils to curl upwards really fast.

Witness the first try, the smallest bowl. I curled the end around a few times and figured out which way  I needed to hold it to get the loose rope to join, then just went for it. It turned into a half sphere very quickly! Diameter is 6cm, height 3cm and the base is completely rounded. I think it might have to go into the dolls' picnic set.

Second bowl is my favourite, it feels the right size for this amount of rigidity. It is firm and stable and holds its shape when picked up. It is 13.5cm diameter, and 4cm high. There is a certain amount of shaping you can do to make it taller or flatter, but it mainly holds on to the right shape.

The final bowl was a test of a few things, I wanted to see how much rope they really used, and I timed myself to see how long these really took. The bowl took me 45 minutes, and this was the slowest one by far. I pivoted manually for pretty much the entire time, aside from the last 3-4 coils when I just let it run. 18 cm by 6cm, depending on how much you squash the base down.

I'm pleased I gave it a go, but I will have to put these into rotation, and find them useful, before I go making up hundreds.

Supplies:
20 meters cotton cording: £4.60
1 large spool cotton thread: £0.40
Total: £5.00 for 3