Today we have the first of a few guest posts from our forum member Tracey.

I am very interested in the different ways that pods and vessels can be shaped, often seeing a felted piece and thinking ‘what shape resist did they use?’
The first pod pictured here was made using a 12” diameter round resist.  It has six layers of blended Merino wool each side, and it is embellished with silk yarn and mulberry silks.  I cut a 3” slit in the centre to extract the resist once fulled, and it resulted in an oval opening.  A crossed slit would make the opening more rounded, or you can just cut a small circle.  It is always better to start small, you can then make the opening bigger if required.

I also made a seashore pod.  This was made the same way as the green pod but I think the resist was about 19” diameter, quite big! I blended blues to replicate the sea and added white silk caps and curly locks to hopefully look like the crashing waves. I then sewed a few shells and sea glass onto the beach, using invisible thread.

Then as an experiment, I felted over another slightly smaller resist of 10” diameter, decorated it with silk caps and silk tops.  This time I cut the opening to extract the resist on the outer edge of the circle, so the bottom of the ‘vase’ is the opposite side to the cut, and here is the result.

I may sew beads around the top in an idle moment!
Here is a picture of where the openings were cut to extract the resist on the green and blue pods: