Limpets part 3 - more 3D forms

As promised, I’ve gone on to make limpet-inspired 3D… objects… made in the round instead of flat then seamed.

 

So it’s straight into free machining. If you machine stitch madly, round and round in a not-quite circular pattern, a flexible fabric should distort into a 3D cone.  

Yes! Well, not too bad… this first one’s rust felt, just free machined round and round from the centre in shaded rayon 30 Alcazar thread, then cut out.

And here’s a colony of them, domed FME on creamy felt. I like the extra colour-mixing of the coloured bobbin thread coming through, the bands would be too solid otherwise. Hmm, this is one to come back to…

So, how about the same method on dissolvable fabric? I give you – limpets made entirely of thread! It’s domed FME (as above) worked on Solufleece. I tried it first in a hoop, but couldn’t get a steep cone – that’s the big shallow one. Holding the fabric without a hoop worked better, but ouch, it’s tough on the fingers holding so tight. I used shiny off-white rayon 30 threads.

I really like these limpets, but they’re quite hard work - the stitching needs to be dense, to get the doming effect and to link the stitches without any structural support, so they turn out very stiff and difficult to decorate.

I also had a quick go at hand stitching 3D limpet cones – by partially gathering circles as you would for shibori. Trickier than it looks, and not a lot of fun.

Finally, I thought I’d try a couple of techniques from Jean Draper’s book, “Stitch and Structure”.

Coiling. Here I tried wrapping and coiling a cord to form  a shell shape. It’s sort of like making a coiled clay pot – only slower and trickier, IMHO. I used thick nylon cord and Coats Anchor multicolour pearl cotton thread. Quite tough on the fingers, and difficult to deal with the cord ends at the start and finish even after I melted/sealed them with a soldering iron. But the result’s quite cute… as long as you don’t look inside 😉

Buttonhole stitch - worked round and round a real limpet shell, starting at the top and increasing to match its shape (so why did it end up so steep?), in Crofter DK knitting yarn. A stiffer yarn might give a better result, but would be harder to stitch.

What else could I do? Well it’d be easy to crochet a cone, but not very interesting… knitting likewise. Felting might work, especially at a large scale… bigger forms generally might be worth exploring, as vessels perhaps.

But for now I’m moving on. Next time – surface designs or patterns inspired by multiple limpet shells.