Bowl

According to Instagram, I made this experimental free-motion quilting sample a year ago. It sat in my UFO collection until a week or two ago, when I started picking friends’ brains for ideas. To use it up, making a vinyl zipper pouch was suggested. I liked that idea.

I already had the paper circle cut in my templates drawer. I know I keep this stuff for a reason!

I took the piece to Spotlight to find a coordinating zipper. The friendly zipper rep dude was restocking the shelves. He helped me try to colour match the snail/snot green. (I honestly like the colour, but I cannot think of another word to describe the shade.) We failed. The vinyl zipper pouch plan was scrapped.

This week, I realised that it would work as a simple quilted bowl. A few hours later, it was indeed a bowl. Ta da! Another thing is crossed off my UFO list!

The design came from a tattoo colouring book my mother gave me.

Maybe I can keep buttons in it.

It is not fancy, but it is finished.

I have started to think of it as my yakuza bowl. The incongruous combination of the Japanese dragonfly print and the design inspired by a colouring book full of tattoo imagery make me think of yakuza. In Japan, only criminals have tattoos, and you cannot enter a public bath or hot spring if you are tattooed. The fact that gang members have tattoos is about all I know of Japan’s criminal underbelly. Japan was such a safe place to live; I think the worst crime I encountered in three and a half years living there was umbrella theft, and even then I suspect that the umbrella thieves were not truly hardened criminals but simply too tipsy when they left the bar to know their own umbrellas.