Wheel Throwing TIPS + Pottery Village SHOW & TELL

With over 30 years of pottery experience, I am here to bring you tips, inspiration and tutorials from my straw bale homestead in the Canadian countryside. Welcome or welcome back. I am really looking forward to sharing a whole bunch of stuff with you today. One of the main things that I'm going to be talking about is how to get better fast at throwing and where most of your energies should be going in the beginning. However, before we get there, I also wanted to share some other things with you. It being Christmas, we have a few decorations. Honestly, I keep Christmas super simple around here. We don't go overboard. We just put out some decorations like these ones that I've made by hand and we put up some little lights on my obelisk that's in the living room and I keep gifts super simple as well. I fill the kids stockings with really lovely treats, so dried mango and some really fine chocolate and just things that I don't normally buy for them and they really look forward to that and then books. Usually we get a whole bunch of books and that's sort of it. So over the years I've realized I can do what I want. We don't have to go overboard with these things and it's still magical and enjoyable. I wanted to share some things that I've made out of pottery for Christmas decorations in case it inspires you and then I will also be making some new pieces today. So you may or may not have seen the Christmas ornament I made this year with the sprig mold and I want you to notice on the back of this, you may be able to see it, hopefully you can, that it has little tiny marks where it was on kiln stilts. So with something like this that's light and small I'm able to fire it on little stilts that I made and I'm going to be making some more of those in this video. I'm like, I'm leaning over here to be in the camera view but I had this I wanted to show you. Maybe I'll start with this actually. This I have to move because I'm right over top of it and it is quite potent. It's just a little pot that sits on top of a candle and in the top we put some Christmassy essential oils so clove and cinnamon and orange. It's a really nice blend. The kids absolutely love lighting it and having this scent in the house at this time of year. So that's one of the things I've made and now I will move it over here so I'm not inhaling it directly. Although it is all natural it still has a bit of kind of smokiness that comes off of it. Anyway back to the ornaments. So when you're making something like these you don't necessarily want to have the back just raw clay because as it spins and turns on the Christmas tree you will see the back side as well. So anytime we want to have the entire surface glazed we need to raise it up on little stilts or prongs and then those little stilts get removed after the firing and the little tiny sharp spots where they were touching the glaze need to be ground off. I use a Dremel tool. It works really well. So I'm going to be making more stilts today. I like making my own stilts because it's so much cheaper and then you can make exactly what you want. So I'll be showing you how I do that today. You definitely want to buy a little bit of wire. So high temperature wire you can order that online no problem and then you cut it up into little pieces with a wire cutter and and stick it into the clay and then bisque fire them and honestly that's all you need to do. So you save tons of money by making your own it's super easy and then you can make whatever sizes and shapes you require. Now a little disclaimer when you're using stilts you have to use them only on pieces that are very lightweight. They will slump and the pieces will either roll off of them or stick to them if they slump down and touch the clay. So just really lightweight pieces on stilts. And then I can share with you my little village here. So I had this grand plan when we had kids that I was going to do little advent houses and I have put numbers on some of them and my whole idea which I kind of haven't continued or finished because this is all I got to was to have a house for all 25 days of leading up to Christmas and inside each of those houses I would put a little activity card. So little things like watching a favorite Christmas movie, baking some cookies, making a little Christmas spritz out of essential oil that the kids can kind of spray on things, making a snowman if there was snow, reading a Christmas book, whatever it was every day would have an activity. But like I said I've sort of I've sort of let go of that. But that's what started these little houses and I thought I would make a few houses every year to keep adding on to it. And these houses have all been made with my red clay and I've textured them in different ways. So this one it's a little barn. This one has sort of a stone texture on it. And then on the top of them I've just used a thick matte white glaze and really smeared it on quite heavily. And for the clay I just left it raw clay and then I took some red iron oxide, brushed it on the whole thing and then wiped it back. So the glazing was really simple on these. I think I also did some little embellishments in certain places like around windows with a white or black underglaze. I even made a Saskatchewan grain tower. I made sure I made them big enough underneath to insert a battery-operated candle so that they weren't going to be a fire hazard. Some of them got little chimneys like this one. Each one is different and unique and super sweet. And then the other thing that I did was make these. It's got some candles stuck up in it. This is a Christmas tree and to make this this was thrown on the wheel tapered into a point at the top and then I took an exacto knife and cut out all these little triangles and bent the clay up while it was still soft. These ones were glazed in a sage green glaze with white over top. So that's my Christmas inspiration for you but I'm going to set this aside and talk to you about what I'm making today. Okay so this is what I'm actually making today. I'm going to be making some new cruets. I use this for olive oil. You could also use it for vinegar, tumblers and then the pottery stilts. So for the cruets I buy these little spouts online and the nice thing about them is that they've got some give. So the rubber here at the bottom and they taper which is really important because then it allows you a little bit of give. Because clay shrinks so much it's always hard to tell exactly where size is going to end up. So this gives you a little bit of wiggle room and I use these right now to approximate how big I'm going to have that opening at the top and I don't always get it right. Sometimes these don't fit. Sometimes it's too tight and they kind of push back out or sometimes it's too loose but you can always use these as a little vase if this doesn't fit so no biggie. So I'm going to be making those pieces but both of these pieces are essentially a cylinder. One is tapered at the top and then the other is simply a cylinder. What I would really love for you to know about is a drill I call it the three minute rule or the three minute pot and that is to get yourself trained to have some practice sessions. So once you've learned the basic skills I find that a lot of people tend to slow down their progress and I think that's because they spend so much time number one making different shapes all the time or number two too much time on each pot. They treat it like this precious thing that cannot be lost. Do not have that attitude. If you really want to jump ahead in your pottery you have to let go of the preciousness and one of the greatest ways to do that is with this drill and I'm just going to tell you about it and then I'm going to get on and throw my pieces but the drill is that you spend no more than three minutes on each pot. You have one minute for centering, you have one minute for pulling up your clay and one minute for whatever finishing you want to do to the shape and then you cut it off the wheel and you do it again and you do not keep any of those pieces. You line them all up. I suggest getting maybe 10 and practicing that regularly. So there's this theory the 80-20 rule perhaps you've heard of it and it applies to so many things in life so 20% of your efforts are going to yield 80% of the results and that is exactly what this drill does. If you spend 20 minutes of your time that you are throwing on the wheel doing that drill you will see 80% possibly more results in your throwing. So at the end once you have all your pieces keep them in line as you throw them so you're backwards for me here. Number one, number two, number three, number four, number five and so on. Cut them all in half at the end of each session and evaluate them. See what you're doing repeatedly. Are you leaving extra clay at the bottom? Are you getting too thin in the middle? Are you leaving extra clay at the top as well? Are your shapes consistent? Are they all over the place? And evaluating that is so helpful because quite often when you're new you think you're pulling up all the clay but when you cut your pieces in half you see that you didn't and it allows you to train your brain to know what it feels like when it's still too thick. And the other thing is it just trains you to not be so precious about it. So you can recycle all that clay no problem. I can do further videos on how to recycle clay but it's so useful to let go of that need for perfection. Right now you're learning, you're practicing and it's like doing scales on an instrument. You really want that technique and you want those muscles to be firing and that muscle memory to develop. So if you can do a three minute pot ten times over and if you do that at least once a week, maybe more, you will see dramatic, dramatic results. So if you do that please let me know what your results are and I will get throwing now and making some other stuff and I will see you at the end of the video. Enjoy! Besides the pottery pieces I've made this week I'm also working on some extra pillow shams. It's they're 26 by 26 inches and I have one completed and one in pieces so I thought I would show you those as well. I make everything out of flax linen. If you have never had flax linen bedding you don't know what you're missing. Once you go with linen you will not be going back. It does take a little bit of time and a few washes to soften up a bit so beware of that but once it softens it is the most delicious thing to sleep in and I like to put little ruffles around the edges of these pillowcases and also little tie closures. So there's a bit of an envelope style happening here where there's a piece in there that the pillow will tuck up in behind and then everything gets tied like this with the little bow and I think it just looks so sweet but to be honest these take forever to make. This probably took longer than it would if I were to sew myself a dress or a shirt because ruffles and gathering takes a lot of time and things like the shirt that I make that I'm wearing here also has these ruffles. If you're curious to know how a ruffle is made I thought I would show you. So this huge long piece is the ruffle to go around the matching pillowcase. I haven't sewn it yet and let me find a spot. So I have four different spots in which I started and finished a line of stitching because I'm going to match that up to all four corners and then I don't have to gather the whole thing around that would be too much so then I can gather each section at a time but what you do when you're gathering is you actually do a line of stitches with your sewing machine and the stitches are longer than it would normally be so you have it set usually on the highest length setting that you can and you don't back stitch at the front or the end. Usually you back stitch when you're sewing because it locks in your stitches but you don't want these locked in. I will take one of those loose thread ends and start pulling and you have to keep sliding it down but that actually is what creates the gather and you keep going like that and then you take that gathered piece and you sew it to the front or the back. I sewed these to the front of the pillow sham. So the individual pieces look like this. I have a front and then I have two pieces for the back. I have a full size piece and in one spot along one edge I've actually hemmed it already and then I have the smaller piece to the envelope which is the back as well and it has also been hemmed already. Besides those pieces I also have the four ties which I will sew on as I'm assembling it. So that's how I make the large pillow shams and I'm sure there's online tutorials if you want to know more about making something like that and oh there's one more thing. I finished my Oslo hat finally so it's already been blocked and if you're not familiar with knitting when you're done knitting something you wet it and wring it out and then lay it flat to dry. That's called blocking. It makes everything sit nice and flat and there it is. To be honest I don't wear hats very often. I think with bangs especially I don't like them to be flattened so I sewed myself a jacket this winter which has a lovely hood which is what I normally use but if it's super cold or for some reason I want to have a hat I thought I would knit myself a nice one and I really like this hat. It's lovely. I find that it does slide down a little bit as I'm wearing. I don't know if I did it a little bit too loose. My first attempt was way too tight so it could be that or it could just be the shape of my head. My daughter's head is like that. No matter what the hat is it just sort of slides off her head. So I don't know. It's all good but it's a lovely hat so if you're looking for a nice simple toque to knit the Oslo hat by Petite Knits. I think that's all I have to share today. Thank you so much for watching and I look forward to seeing you in the next video. If you're watching this over the holidays when I posted it happy holidays to you, happy new year and I will see you very soon. Take care.