Sewing Ceramics Together
All the pieces miraculously came out the kiln untouched—except for a crack on one of the holes on the pink one, but once it’s sewn together (skipping that hole) it won’t be noticeable from a distance, and it’s still usable.
When I was cutting the holes, I was mindful the number of holes were the same on top & bottom.
It takes a bit longer to crochet than normal because there’s no wiggle room in the ceramic, but I was able to crochet in the round with the small hook—the size holes I chose ended up being good & it didn’t look as ugly as I thought it would as opposed to a smaller less noticeable hole.
The two birdhouses with windchimes at the bottom were very difficult to sew in—at least, the first (pink) one was difficult, because I had already sewn the whole thing, and I had to figure out a way to cover up the bottom hole. Eventually I gave up & drew the yarn around the holes until it was covered; it’s also not very noticeable but if you look closely at it the blue one’s (right) bottom looks tidier.
Sewing the top part was a bit more difficult than I thought—because I didn’t think about it at all. Luckily I already had a curved needle from an earlier project, and in order to make it look like crochet I drew through every stitch, two stitches for each hole, so it has the same style as the bottom—I’m glad I did this because I think it would have made it look very uneven.
Also, each birdhouse has a different stitch; the pink (spring) one is a seed stitch, the brown (fall) one is a lemon stitch, the teal (winter) one is a single stitch, and the blue (summer) one… I forgot, but I remember how I did it (alternating rows of sc, hdc, sc in the round).
The final steps were sewing on the decorations & handle, then painting the inside of yarn with mod podge. I used quite a few layers to make sure it was going to be as solid as possible—but unless I had all of them hanging (which I did) they were going to sag and the MP would harden the yarn in its floppy state—the yarn also warped the ceramics so the pieces weren’t very vertical. So, I just stuffed them with cotton, which fixed their shape and ensured they wouldn’t sag (yarn has nowhere to go). The coins on this piece looked very good—I was worried the details weren’t prominent enough for the glaze to pool in. I lost quite a few keys (for dangling) from dropping them, and didn’t make enough decors as I wanted, but the number I made ended up taking up enough room.
