I have tons of pieces of screen printed felt that I made as samples for my screen printing class. I decided in the spirit of finishing UFO’s that I wanted to do some free motion machine stitching and use the screen printed felt. I am also working on the next class which includes using a stencil to decorate felt. So I started with a couple of background pieces that had been screen printed with a soy wax screen. I made a stencil of a fish design that I “borrowed” from a brew pub that we visited in NYC a couple of years ago. I then stenciled the fish on to the background felt. Once that dried, I free motion stitched around the outline of the fish. That was a good warm up since I hadn’t used my machine for a while.

The two pieces were about 12″ square and after I stitched the fish, I wrapped each one around a black canvas. The top and the bottom edges were left with a natural felted edge instead of cutting it completely straight.

Perhaps you can see the stitching in this photo if you click on it to enlarge it.

Here are the two canvases together. I like how these turned out and may hang them in the guest bathroom. I haven’t decided yet. I won’t sell these since the fish isn’t my own design.

Next I decided to use a few pieces of silk screened felt that I over dyed blue. The over dye was a bit dark so it needed a light thread to show up well.

Here’s the second one. All of these designs are from work I did in my Level 2 Experimental Stitch class. I thought it would be easier to repeat a design since my free motion skills were a bit rusty.

The last one I decided to add a bit more dense stitching and “color” in the sketch. I always wonder why I don’t do free motion more often because it’s something I really enjoy. The screen printed felt pieces make nice backgrounds. All of these are 6-8″ or so they don’t take very long to stitch up. I have a lot more so hopefully, I’ll have time to do some more.