My favorite physician is retiring this month and I wanted to give him a special parting gift. So, what better than a good bottle of wine with a handmade cozy?
I had made a wine cozy/gift bag a while back, but the resist was just a bit off. I took Lyn’s advice and straightened the lines and rounded the bottom slightly.
I made some Nuno prefelt for the leaves and rolled a variety of grapes in preparation.
I didn’t want to replicate the whole first design, so I decided to have the grapes hanging from an old worn fence. Of course, I forgot to take pictures after I laid out the background and began adding the design elements. My bad.
Unlike the first one I did using corriedale as the base, I used black prefelt. Then added some light gray batts from my scarflette, a little mulberry silk and a darker gray for texture in the fence. Then I added the grapes, leaves and vines and began rubbing.
Some of the vines and grapes were stubborn so I had to do a little needlefelting to fix them after the fulling. Also I think because of the prefelt, there wasn’t as much shrinkage, so I had to keep fulling to get a good fit.
For the turnover top I used a little green batt on the inside and attached the leaf and vine. I made a few holes and wove the vines through the top to tighten it slightly.
Again for the bottom, I took Lyn’s advice and bashed the heck out of the bottom to get the rounded shape I needed. Thanks Lyn!
Here are some views and a close up.