Playing the angles

When making fabric bowls there are many things that have to be determined.  First and foremost is what fabric am I going to use?  How many fabrics am I going to use and where are these fabrics going to appear?  Next, how large is this bowl going to be?  For me, sometimes the amount of a particular fabric dictates this, sometimes not.  Next,, what size rope?  I have 3 thicknesses of rope and usually, the larger the bowl, the thicker the rope.  Next, the shape of the bowl. Round or oval.  Also, is it going to have handles or not.  The final decisions is, how steep are the sides going to be.  With my new sewing machine I have found making a bowl with steep sides (as close to 90 degrees as possible) virtually impossible which I find rather limiting.  I asked my friend Margaret who has been making these bowls longer than I have if she had any suggestions.  She suggested I pull on the rope in an upwards direction which I am stitching it which I tried out.  It healed a bit but was VERY difficult to stitch and also to control.  I got up this morning determined to try to come up with a technic for making steeper angled sides.

Looking around at what fabrics I had laying around the cutting table, I found I had just enough of the fall hue fabrics to make one more smallish bowl (fabrics,, size, and width or rope, CHECK).  I had the most of the dark green so best to make the base that color, a small gold stripe (not much of that fabric left) and then finish it off with the print.  O.K.  The idea was to attempt to make the angle of the sides at as steep an angle as I could.  Once I had a 4" base it was time to start tilting for the sides.  The nice thing about rope is that it does have a lot of give to it.  I took my fingers into the bottom of the base of the bowl and pushed it up against the needle shank with the needle in and the foot down and tried my best to maintain this angle which placing the rope the best I could directly at a 90 degree angle to the base.  I sewed VERY slowly since I knew that this is where the die would be cast for the angle on the sides.  I continued around  2 more times and then decided to change colors.  To my delight, the angle was indeed much sharper but the sewing was looking a bit rough .  At times I did not have the needle lined up properly so it was necessary to go back and do some mending of the gaps.  When I added the yellow I continued to pop the bowl up from the bottom against the needle shank but let off with placing the rope as carefully as I had been with the green.  From the point of where I started shaping the sides, I added enough rows so that the bowl would be 2" high.  I measured the bowl as the end and it had increased from a 4" diameter to a 5" diameters.  So far, that is the smallest amount of increase I have had sewing on my new machine.  I am definitely going to need to practice this technic to get it looking show room perfect but as least now I feel I have a bit more control so that my bowls don't all end up with the same side angles.