The challenge for this quarter is “surface decoration by twists, tubes, yarns” and I chose to use only yarns as surface decoration.

This is my inspiration photo, taken by my daughter Annie, on a local beach.  I used it to inspire my felted piece for the challenge.

The first thing I see in the photo are the ropes, thick and thin, in white, orange and turquoise and there’s a lot of frayed ends.  Then at the top there’s a metal ring that may have had chain attached to it at some time, and in the middle is some tangled fibre.

I decided to make the yarn embellishments first, starting with the ropes.

I used 100% wool 4-ply yarn to make the ropes (there’s a good tutorial by ‘Textile Arts Now’ that shows how to make a twisted cord).  The thickness of the cord will depend on how many strands of yarn used to make it.

Note: Some 100% wool is labelled ‘Superwash’ and it won’t felt.

To distress the ends of the ropes, untwist the yarn strands.  It can be tricky – I lost a bit during the separation of the strand below – it looks like 3-ply now!

I used 100% wool yarn to make a chain by tying knots at regular intervals in a double length of yarn.

A piece of this fancy yarn, after distressing, made the fibre mess I needed.

I wanted to add a little something that wasn’t in the inspiration photo but I still wanted it to be made from yarn.

After a quick trip to Googleland I found a lovely free knitting pattern, by ‘knittingninja’, free starfish pattern, so I made one from pink mohair.  A piece of knitting can be fairly ‘solid’ so I thought the fluffy mohair would help the starfish to felt in easily and I made the stitches a bit looser than I normally would.

So I then had all the components I needed – all made from yarn.

I made a base of loose yellow merino wool fibres to compose my challenge piece on.  When I’d finished I took a quick snap on my phone to check the composition – it’s much easier to see the whole thing on a screen.

I started the felting agitation very carefully so as not to disturb the design, then turned it over and worked mainly from the back – checking the front at regular intervals.

When the yarns were loosely attached I rolled the felt until the piece felt firm.  When it was dry I trimmed the edges with a rotary cutter – the finished size is 32 x 26cm (13″ x 10″).

 

As you can see from the close-up below, the texture is pronounced but none of the yarn embellishment moves under finger pressure!  It’s all felted in there “good ‘n’ proper”.