It’s December 1st and you know what that means…

It’s holiday time!  Time to decorate, time for making gifts, the annual Christmas missive (yeah, I actually write one of those…), and all festive thoughts aside, today is  Day Without Art, an international program to mark AIDS Awareness Day.  I logged on this morning, and my Google home page has all the blogs I follow, plus things like the MET artwork of the day, something from the vast archives of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  Today I logged on and there was nothing but a black rectangle.  There was a note attached, “Today’s daily artwork will not appear. Day Without Art began on December 1, 1989, as part of a day of action and mourning in response to the AIDS crisis”.  It hasn’t escaped me that this is a perfect day to reflect that we still have a lot of work to do in the arts community for AIDS awareness, as we gear up for the spending/decorating/eating frenzy that marks the last month of the year.

On a brighter note, my daughter got with the holiday spirit immediately, she disappeared into the bathroom and came out decorated for the season!

And I started to play around with something I could make for small gifts for a few friends, I resurrected a technique I’ve written about in my Leftover’s Monograph, and climbed into my attic stash in the sky, and pulled out some circa 1986 scraps, and had a blast.  The idea here is to take 1″ scraps (on grain, no need for bias), and twist them around piping cord, like a barber pole, and coil up the cord, stitching it together, round and round, with a triple step zig-zag.

I’ll let the photos do the explaining, now that I found out how to put in a caption!

Cut one inch strips of fabric on grain.

If the fabric is ravel-y, unravel a couple of threads on the edges, the effect will be something like chenille when the bowl is stitched.

Start by wrapping the one inch strip around the tapered end of the piping, securing with a pin. Wrap for about 6".

Fold the tapered end back on itself and secure with a triple step zig zag in the machine.

Continue spiraling the wrapped piping in a coil under the presser foot of the machine, zig-zagging around to hold the piping together.

As the bowl grows, start to shape the sides. Keep adding one inch strips by overlapping ends.

When the bowl is the correct size, cut the piping and taper the end, wrap with the fabric strip and taper to nothing around the top of the bowl.