Friday, January 9, 2015

KNIT Pottery Bowl


I was beyond thrilled with how this KNIT pottery bowl turned out. It was a present that I made a friend for Christmas (I sure hope she likes it as much as I do). Below I will share how I made it. I think the bowl "mold" size that I used was perfect for a yarn bowl and I am planning to make more of these to give as gifts and for myself. :) Many other yarn bowls I have seen are thrown on the wheel, but I have a preference for slab rolling and hand building for my pottery.


Here you can see what the wet bowl looks like on the mold right after I finished carving out KNIT. As you can see from the top picture, you will put a ball of yarn in the bowl and let the strand be pulled through one of the letters as you use the yarn for knitting.


Here it is hanging out on the wedging table, with the wine chiller (I will tell you about that one next week!) before I put it on my shelf at the Art Center to dry.


To make this piece, I traced out my patterns, which are the bottom of the mold (just some hard plastic cereal bowl that I got for free years ago) and the perimeter of the outside of the bowl. I made little marks on the bowl so that I knew where I had started and ended. I cut out my patterns and them placed them on to my slabbed clay and put it on from there, wrapping the semi-circle piece around first and joining the edges with scratching, slip, and molding. Then, placing the bottom on with the same technique.

What you can see in the second picture is that I made a coil that I attached to the bottom as a lip and base.

I have a few ideas of what I want future ones to look like, so I guess I better get back in the Art Center and start creating!

6 comments:

Mom Knows Best said...

This is a great idea for my knitting friend. This would prevent her dog from playing with yarn

Tru said...

How does it work? I'm assuming you have to wind the yarn into a ball first.

Mom of Two said...

Yes, you have to wind the ball first. Some people like to wind their yarn to make sure there is no knots or breaks in the yarn. They sell yarn ball winders (hand powered and electric) if you are so inclinded - check out Amazon they have a bunch, but I wound this one on my own. This particular yarn tangles very easily and makes for a much longer time-frame for the project. The bowl works by keeping the ball in place and you just pull through and it will keep your yarn straight and help maintain tension.

Jamie said...

What a great idea!! I so wish we had a place up here where I lived to do ceramics, etc. :( Miss doing that!

Unknown said...

I really like this idea and think it turned out so lovely! This would make an awesome gift for someone!

Rachel C said...

Lucky friend! I've always thought those yarn bowls were a pretty cool idea, and yours looks great :)