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Month: November 2012

Felt and Fibre scraps

Felt and Fibre scraps

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I thought it was time I tidied out my felt and wool scraps as the boxes and bags they were in were getting too full. I know it’s really geeky to categorise scraps but whenever I try to find the right size pieces for a project I seem to spend more time sorting and searching than anything else. I never throw anything felt, fabric or fibre away, everything is good for something. This is from my bag of scraps that aren’t usable for anything else, so I save them for using between layers of texture felt.

Often when I’m laying out a project for felting, I end up with a few wisps of wool or fibres here and there, so I put them in a bag and keep adding until it’s full, then card them together. I get some really nice heathery blends, and they always add a lot of interest to felt with such a variety of colours and fibre blends.

Sorting out my box of big spare pieces was fairly easy, I mostly sorted it into thick, regular and cobwebby pieces. The box of smaller spare pieces took a lot longer. In the end I had about 8 or 9 separate piles: thick, regular and cobwebby pieces, and, as shown in this next photo: long wide strips; medium regular strips;  thin strips; regular short strips and really thin and short strips.

I bought some water soluble stabiliser a while ago, so hopefully I’ll find time to use the really short thin strips for making a bowl using Ruth’s tutorial. The longish thin strips are great for making into loop fasteners. I wet them with soapy water and roll between my palms until they’re felted and sew them onto my project. If the piece is long enough I can leave the ends dry, fluff them out and the loop can be felted in with the project.

Once I’d finished sorting all my pieces, I chose some to use for my project-a collage book cover. I’d make a similar one a few years ago using felt pieces and ‘invisible’ thread, but I wanted to use my fancy new machine and zig zag stitch to sew strips and pieces.

This is the front of the finished cover:

And this is the back:

What do you do with all your felt and fibrey scraps and offcuts?

New Covers

New Covers

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New Covers and a good laugh  🙂

So ok im listening this time and decided to do the inside out version,

laying out the fibres I wanted to eventually be on the outside and then I covered them with white fiber (which i forgot to take a pic )  not thinking that the white would end up on the outside, instead of the inside

I used silk threads and hand spun yarn

I thought this green would be over the top embellishments,  my brain really wasnt working 🙂 This had to be turned inside out which was right way round  haha

 This color should have been on the inside when you opened it up

And because I was only thinking about the actual embellishments and confusing myself  a lot, I ended up doing the opposite,   The white on the outside and the colors on the inside

I  couldn’t believe I got so confused with the ins and outs lol

So now I have a white cover and you cant see the inside at all , but i like it so all is not lost 🙂

So now  the next one I was way more careful and and started out with some silk threads

And added the  same color all over the embellishment, front and back and  i thought i was being smart or i really didnt want to get confused again,    Until !!!

 I forgot which side I actually put the threads on so it was pot luck as to which side I cut for the opening

Lucky i got that bit right and cut the correct side  lol  The finished cover

Both covers together  and now i feel like this is a challenge that im not giving up on. I’ll get these covers right if its the last thing i do 🙂

 I know i’ll  end up with covers coming out of my ears and sitting on the shelf  but it’s the principle now and its not going to beat me !!!!

I’m also having a play with rust dying from Ruths last post on a piece of gauze,  I’m using a rusty nail spike that my hubby collects to learn his Blacksmithing with,  he makes knives out of these spikes the old school way,!

So we’ve both had a good laugh this week at my expense ,and hubby telling me that its upstairs for thinkin luv 🙂    but i’ve thoroughly enjoyed it anyway and there’s always the next one 🙂

Exhibition and Sale

Exhibition and Sale

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The guild I belong to, the Ottawa Valley Weavers and Spinners Guild, had its annual exhibition and sale this last weekend. I had a booth selling scarves and wraps and flowers and cuffs and hats etc. The guild does a display on a theme and has demos and promotes our classes. It’s our big event for the year. The venue is beautiful it is a community center now but used to be a church and has a huge domed center.

Here are some pictures of my booth and me explaining what nuno felt is to a customer.

 

 

This is one of the organisers wearing an exquisite shawl she knit using her own hand spun alpaca.

This my friend Judy,http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.jumaka.com%2Fspinning%2Fpetfur.html&h=fAQGCIXhy , she not only likes to spin yarn, including dog and cat fur she also likes to spin wood on a lathe to make nostepinne for manually making a center pull ball) and  drop spindles in several styles and weights including supported spindles like she is using in the picture. This is her booth, she shares it with another friend who is more camera shy.

 

The Guild display had the theme around the house  and of course we had spinners and weavers demonstrating.

 

Lastly here are pictures of some of the many booths that where there. We had a good variety with both finished goods and supplies.

     

     

All in all it was a good show with not as many people as usual but the ones that came were buying. I hope everyone’s upcoming sales are good.

The Rhythm of Autumn

The Rhythm of Autumn

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The Rhythm of Autumn is a felted mixed media piece that I made several years ago. At the time I was making it, I thought I might do a tutorial on the process so I took a lot of process photos. It originally was going to be cut up and made into covers for various small kitchen appliances such as a toaster cover or a cover for a mixer. Once it was partially completed, I changed my mind in mid stream. So it ended up being a wall hanging. The final piece measures almost four feet across by 2 1/2 feet wide. Due to all the changes I made in the original plan, it took over a year to complete.

 

This is the original layout. I think I used mixed 56’s wool but actually I can’t remember for sure. I partially felted the piece into prefelt.

 

Then I wrapped the prefelt around some rusty pipes to rust dye it. The prefelt was wet and presoaked in vinegar water.

 

Then I put the rolled up bundle in a pail of salt water and covered it with a plastic bag. I left it for two weeks to rust.

Here it is after two  weeks.

 

This is the entire piece.The sad part was that a lot of this luscious color washed out with the subsequent felting.

 

I added fabric  leaves cut out of commercial fabrics. These  were too heavy a fabric to nuno felt so I  stitched them on. I was originally  planning to machine sew them on but that proved impossible. So I  ended up hand stitching them down. That took a while.

Here’s a closer view after stitching and felting.

 

I had also added some silk bits prior to felting.

 

Here’s the entire piece after felting. I decided not to cut it up at this point but was unsure what to do with it.

 

This was an idea of adding more interest by putting darker lines through the piece with machine stitching. I used yarn to mark the lines through the piece.

 

I did end up cutting along the yarn lines and adding dark wool in the space between the  cut pieces of felt.

 

I covered the lines with water-soluble fabric and pinned it all in place.

 

Then I machine stitched a “pebble” design over the cut areas making sure that I stitched over the felt edges. The stitching would now hold the cut pieces together. Once it was all stitched, I washed out the water-soluble fabric.

 

Unfortunately, at this point, I had given up the idea of doing a tutorial so I don’t have a photo of the piece after all the machine stitching was completed. I wasn’t happy with the result and left the project uncompleted for a while. Then I took it to my local fiber group and Bunny suggested that I crumple the entire piece, stitch and stuff as needed to hold it in place and then make it a wall hanging. The photo above shows the mesh I used to back the piece. It is usually used for rug hooking. I crumpled the piece until I got the shapes I wanted, stuffed some areas with extra wool and pinned it all in place. I then hand stitched on the back side to hold everything together and stitched the mesh in place.

 

Here you can see some of the stuffed areas on the back.

 

Here is the finished piece. I ended up covering the mesh on the back with acrylic felt and applying a “quilt sleeve” for hanging. I guess the moral of the story is to never give up. That piece of felt you don’t like all that much can be turned into something entirely different!

 

 

Changing the Design of a Nuno Felt Shrug

Changing the Design of a Nuno Felt Shrug

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In the spring I made some shrug jackets using a pattern I saw in a book about making simple garments with your weaving. I don’t weave but I can felt a rectangle instead of weaving it.  You would think that I would read what to do instead of just going from memory but that would have been too easy. I made some nice looking shrugs.

Orange shrug after over dying

They look nice enough but they didn’t really fit as well as I would have liked. They were to puffy at the back so not very flattering. I think the problem is the rectangle they are made from was to wide making the shrug to long.  I decided to change them. I unpicked them and gave them a wash to get rid of all the thread holes.

I folded the top down about 1/3 to create a kimono sleeve. You end up with something that is more like a shawl that doesn’t fall off as you use you hands and go about your day.

If you would like a larger collar you can wear it the other way up.

You could also just sew a line down the edge or just the other direction to have a larger sleeve opening. I like these much better. I hope other people like them too. I am going to my guild exhibition and sale this weekend and I will have them there.  On that note if you are in Ottawa this weekend  Drop by the Glebe Community Center to see what we are up to.