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Finally Finished and Playing with Rocks

Finally Finished and Playing with Rocks

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I have finally finished my pouch. Yay! I am not sure how big I want the individual spaces in the bag to be so I have just basted the divisions for now. If they are working fine I will sew them in permanently.

 

Here it is full of things. and some things that didn’t make it in. As you can see it’s not dedicated to one kind of thing. It’s a way to keep all the smallish stuff from filtering down to the bottom of the basket where they are hard to find.

 

 

and all rolled up.

 

Here is the basket. First I put the liner in. It’s a thick, fairly stiff fake silk scarf. I can’t imagine it was nice to wear which is probably why it was in the secondhand clothing store in the first place. It’s great for this job.

 

Adding everything into and onto the basket.

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There was even room left to add my guild library books when I got back to the house.

I am sure you are all as tired f hearing about the basket organizer as I am so it is now time for something new and more colourful. I have been seeing felted rocks popping up on Facebook a lot. I figured they looked like a pretty obvious and easy thing to make, so I will give it ago. The first one I did use floor underlay resists.  I started with a pebble. I covered it completely in wool.

 

 

I cut out a resist a bit bigger than the wool covered pebble and then added the top put the resist on the top of the rock and folded the wool around. then I cut a bigger resist and did it again and marked the top. It was a bit awkward. I should have worked the other way up but where’s the challenge in that. LOL.

 

It fulled down quite fast.

time to start cutting, I rubbed each cut to heal it before doing the next cuts. I don’t think you can see it but the bottom of each layer is fully attached to the one below it.

 

I sat it on a green lid to dry, looks really striking there.

 

 

That worked quite well. Now for a different way.

For this one, I used plastic wrap to keep the layers separate. I cut a small hole in the underside so the layer would be attached to each other.

 

wool wrapped pebble

 

first layer wrapped in plastic

 

3rd layer

I wrapped the last layer in plastic I just rubbed it and rolled it around in my hands as if I was making a felt ball. I did it longer to make sure the inside layers were felted as well. While wrapping I lost track of the top and bottom. Naturally, I picked the wrong side to mark. I cut the first hole and it was attached to the one below so I kept cutting down to the pebble. I planned to stretch each layer, but with it being quite small there wasn’t much stretch or even room to get anything in between the layers to try and stretch.  so In the end I just fulled it tight around the rock.

 

Here is how they compared in size before felting

 

And how they compare with my hand to show the sizes

 

See Lyn, not felted rocks but felted rocks. Ha Ha Ha :O)

Little Steps

Little Steps

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Between recuperating and traveling, I haven’t done much heavy felting lately.

I have been doing  some small projects to try to stay in touch with fibers.

The one felt project I did do was to make some felted rocks for my son Matt in Florida.  Last time he visited us, he was intrigued by the felted rocks I keep in the guest bathroom in a crystal dish that was my mother in laws.  Since I had made his wife, Lia, a clutch purse, I thought I would do something for him.

20151130_133447 20151201_155954I used different wools, silk throwsters waste, silk roving and yarns to embellish them.

I didn’t find the right dish before I brought them down there, but will look on our next trip.

While I was doing a little felting, I decided to try felting some soaps.  I had never done it before and had bought several bars of Yardley soaps. (Purple and Blue on top.)

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One was English lavender and the other aloe.  Both were very fragrant to the point I had to put them in another room to dry. Too perfumy for my taste.

I have a small pillow I use to sit on at my vanity.  I had some matching old sheets and decided to make two covers for them. Yes, I could have felted a cover, but I wasn’t ready.  Besides I feel guilty about my Pfaff sewing machine sitting idle. So, I cut out two cases, stitched them and added a design just for fun.

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What projects have you been working on since the New Year started?

 

Preparing to Teach

Preparing to Teach

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If you teach classes, you already know how much work it is to prepare for a class. But for those of you who haven’t tried your hand at teaching, I thought you might be interested in the preparations that go on before a single student is taught a thing. My friend Paula and I are going to teach a couple of classes at our local community college, FVCC in early June. Today we spent all day preparing. That doesn’t count the time we have already spent planning on what to teach, filling out forms for the college and making a Power Point presentation.

Power Point Presentation

I worked up the Power Point presentation over a month ago and it would have been fairly straight forward if I remembered how to use the program. But I hadn’t used Power Point in a number of years so it slowed me down a bit. I spent at least three hours putting it together and then I had to have someone else upgrade it to Power Point 2010. The equipment at the college seems to be a bit ahead of my Power Point 2003. I never see the point in upgrading software if it still works.

Readying Class SuppliesWe headed down to Camas Creek Yarn as Paula works there and has an in for getting our supplies for the classes. The supplies are included in the cost of the class as that’s the way the college wanted it. In my prior classes, supplies were purchased in advance and just a supply list was given. So we spent several hours getting all the supplies together to put in bags so each student will have a “supply kit”.

Paula Measuring Pre-YarnHere’s Paula measuring out different colors of pre-yarn for the kits.

Confusing Ourselves

We were picking different colors to go with a variety of colors of roving. We needed 4 yards per pack but somehow got confused and started doubling the amount of pre-yarn we needed. Who knew counting was so difficult?

Picking Out Silk Roving

Next we added in some silk roving and silk hankies. So downstairs we went to figure out what colors would go with our color combinations we already had.

Silk HankiesHere are the colors of silk hankies that we chose. Paula dyed these.

Assembly LineThen we set up an assembly line to make our packs. Each pack contains Imperial wool roving, silk hankies, hemp fiber, silk noil, pelsul locks, silk roving, merino roving, pre-felt and pre-yarn. We are going to be doing three projects in the class and there are probably enough embellishments to do 20 projects. But we thought the students would appreciate extra embellishments for later use at home.

Ready to be BaggedThese are all the supplies in one kit.

All Bagged Up

Here’s our pile of bagged kits. I am making a supply list that will be stapled to the bag. But I need to make up some business cards to go in them as well. I’m not sure why I don’t have any of those yet?? (I guess I don’t listen to my own advice after writing all those Marketplace Monday posts.)

Felt Trivet Sample

Then Paula and I spent the rest of the day making samples for the class. We’re starting with a flat piece of felt with embellishments. This one is mine with a silk hankie, hemp, pre-yarn and pelsul locks.

Felt Trivet Sample

This one is Paula’s. She always adds more embellishments than I do. She used pre-felt, silk roving, silk hankie, pre-yarn, flax, silk noil and pelsul locks I think.

Finished SoapsThen we made felted soap. Mine’s orange and Paula’s is green.

Felted RocksAnd the last samples are felted rocks. Paula’s is on the left and mine is the hairy one on the right. All in all, we’ve spent around 12 hours preparing for a 6 hour class. This doesn’t include the time we’ll spend gathering up all the equipment needs, packing up the car and the preparations of setting up the day of the class. I like to be prepared, so I’m not complaining, just letting you know that the time a teacher spends is not just in the classroom. Hopefully, we’ll get enough students signed up for the class to run. Right now, we still have openings so if you’re in northwest Montana, we’d love to have you join us. Just click on the link in the first paragraph to sign up. 

Are you teaching classes? What are your thoughts about class preparation? Any tips for other teachers? We’d love to hear your thoughts. Do you take classes? Do you have suggestions for how teachers could be better prepared or suggestions for better teaching methods? We’d love to hear those too.