Quilted Pottery Projects - APPLYING QUILTING TECHNIQUES TO CLAY!

Hi everybody, this is Anne. When looking for inspirational ideas for decorating pottery, one place to look is at other craft mediums. There are many different forms of craft mediums such as glass, metal, wood, and fiber. In this video, we're going to be looking at the fiber category. It's several different techniques used by quilters. Then see if we can adapt those to our clay. You've all probably seen tufted furniture where buttons or stitches are sewn over furniture cushions, usually in a diamond shape. I'm going to attempt that on this thrown bottle that has slightly stiffened up. The first step is to use a trimming spinner to divide the surface into sixths, which are the red marks. I centered the spinner over the opening and marked around the piece. I wanted to create vertical lines all the way to the bottom, so I used a laser level lined up against the marks that I just made and traced over the green lines. I also divided the piece horizontally by using a measuring tape. I marked every line every one inch from the carved horizontal band. My goal is to start at the bottom of one of the vertical lines and impress a slight line through the center of the adjacent line, then continue up to the top of the next adjacent line. An easy way to do this is to use a bamboo stick. I started at the lowest point, working with a gentle touch so as not to dig into the clay. Hitting my marks, I went all the way to the top. I connected all the dots from right to left, then I connected the dots from left to right. With a damp finger, I erased my drawn lines and marks. This left me with a diamond grid. To give it the tufted look, I simply depressed the clay at each intersection with my finger. I worked very gently so as not to go too deep, risking cracking. I love that tufted look. Next, I'm going to use a pattern tracing wheel. I lightly ran this along the bamboo imprints to give the appearance of stitches. I was careful not to push the blade in too deeply because I was afraid I would lose all those individual stitches. All tufted couches need a button. To make these consistent buttons, I'm using this 1 eighth teaspoon. I simply placed plastic wrap over the spoon bowl and pressed a ball of clay inside. I turned the spoon over on the plastic wrap and cranked the handle while pushing on the top to cut the excess clay away. Now when I pop the clay out, it's a perfect button. I simply scored the intersection and the button, then slipped one of the sides and attached. I continued this over each intersection. Here's one that I made earlier where I also carved a diamond pattern in the top section of the bottle. To finish the design, I decided to paint hummingbirds and morning glories in the section above the quilting. Next, let's see if I can carve a quilting pattern called the double wedding ring into the clay. I started with a thrown vase that is stiffened up to leather hard. Like the first piece, I created division marks along the rim, then used a laser level to trace vertical lines to the bottom of the pot. I further divided the surface with a tape measure along each vertical line at each half inch mark. I steadied a pencil along an L-square ruler and connected the horizontal marks only on opposite sides of the pot, leaving blank spaces on either side. Now here's what that looks like. Using a pencil, I lightly connected the intersections of the first four grid spaces into an X shape. I then drew arced lines around each of those lines radiating out from the center. I continued this all the way down the pot. When the intersections join together, it forms our double wedding ring pattern. As these are tighter lines requiring fine carving, I decided to use this thin square headed carving tool. I simply placed one of the V-shaped corners of that squared head onto the clay and carved each of the arced lines. Now I can simply use a damp sponge to gently wipe away the pencil lines. This also softens the hard burred edges of your carving. Remember, I'm keeping the side panels blank and then carving the other side like the first with the double wedding ring. Finally, instead of buttons, I just painted black dots in each intersection. This really makes the carvings pop. Here's one I carved earlier. I painted little chickadees on branches on the flat sides, then added my signature red bands echoing the little black dots with white dots. Finally, I thought it'd be fun to try and create a clay texture that looks like quilted prairie points. Prairie points are squares of fabrics folded into triangles then stitched together in patterns. To create the triangle texture, I'm using this strip of flashing. Jim cut the top edge into a triangle shape and then applied a layer of painter's tape over the sharp edges. I started to impress the point into the leather hard pot around the band along the rim. Once that layer was done, I continued with another row, starting at the tip where the lines intersected from the first row. I continued with this pattern, which creates a series of triangles and secondary square shapes when lined up. As the vase curves outward, the squares begin to get larger and it's easy for the lines to go wonky. After each row, lightly draw horizontal lines along those textured tips. Each subsequent row will always be pressed along that drawn line. My tip is to keep those rows straight. Now here's one I created earlier. You can see how the squares got larger as the vase got wider, so I had to really concentrate on keeping the horizontal lines straight. On some rows, I had to manually connect triangular lines to keep the pattern straight. I cleaned up all the bird edges then got rid of the crumbs. I then painted a border of cute bees along the bottom as the pattern started to look a bit like honeycomb. There are so many more quilting patterns. I would love to hear what ideas you come up with to combine the art of quilt making with that of pottery. Let me know in the comments below. Thanks to the newest members of our Little Street Pottery Research Facility team. If you'd like to join the team and earn a title, click on the Super Thanks button or the link to buy me a coffee. It also really helps us out if you hit that like button and subscribe to our channel. See you next time in the studio!