Rope Coil Bowl Tutorial

How To Make A Rope Bowl: A Step By Step Tutorial.  I think that my favourite aspect of a rope coil bowl is how easy they are to make. 

They can look quite artisan depending on your choice of materials and they are actually useful. What's not to love!

Shall we have a go at making one? I used 6 mm (roughly 1/4 in) jute twine for mine and my sewing machine with a 'normal' universal needle handled it just fine. My bowl used 10 m which is around 10 yards of twine. It doesn't have to be exact.

You will also need some fabric scraps and a glue stick. I have put a felt circle in the middle of mine for the only reason that I didn't remove the tape because I didn't expect this to work as easily as it does. I just sort of had a go and suddenly it was fabulous! Of course by then, I couldn't get the tape off (and I certainly wasn't about to unpick!). So a felt circle it had to be.

Begin in the centre and fold your twine over on itself and coil a bit. set your machine to a zigzag stitch wide enough to go from piece of twine to piece of twine and start sewing and turning.

Go super slow and stop before you turn to save the needle from breaking.

As you sew, stop from time to time and wrap the twine with a scrap of fabric. I found that gluing this and then wrapping worked best. you cannot really plan this ahead and get it all done in advance because it is hard to imagine where the wraps will end up. just stop, wrap and then keep going.

When the base of your bowl is the size that you want, it is time to turn it into a bowl with sides.

As you can see from the result so far, it would work brilliantly as a man too. I have some plans for my houseplants.

To shape the sides, turn the bowl so that the bit you have sewn so far rests against the side of your machine...

Keep sewing and wrapping until you wither run out of twine or the bowl has sides as high as you want. 
I found some really nice lurex copper bias binding on eBay (I know it sounds perfectly ghastly in a 1970s sort of way) but it actually looks wonderful here and there against the roughness of the jute.

I have finished the end with a bit of Kraft-Tex paper. Leather would be fab too. 

Succulents do seem to go with the bowl! Maybe a mat for the plants WILL be next!