Felt Pod with Differential Shrinkage and Machine Lace

Felt Pod with Differential Shrinkage and Machine Lace

I am continuing on with my experiments with differential shrinkage. I wanted to add some free motion machine stitched lace so I started out with a very simple addition.

I thought I would add some stamens to the center of the pod. I already had black thread in the machine so I just went with that not thinking very far in advance as you will see.

I began my layout with the embroidered piece on the bottom. I covered that stamen with plastic wrap to make sure nothing would stick or felt in. I don’t think that I really needed this step and I will try without the plastic next time.

I then made one layer of black wool laying the wool out in a circular fashion.

On top of that, I added 5 cut pieces of green wool batt. There are probably 6-8 layers of batt so it is  much thicker than the black wool layer. I then went ahead and felted and fulled to get the black to shrink into a cone shape as I showed here.

I then pinned it after shaping to dry. You can see only two of the stamen as they were really not as long as I wanted them to end up. And here is the poor planning part.

You can’t see the stamen in the black center. I should have made a different color center or stitched different colored stamen. Duh!

So I will try another. I will pay more attention to the center color being contrasting with the thread color. I think I will use a resist next time to achieve a different shape.  I also want to progress to adding some texture to the outside surface with machine lace felted in – more ideas/experiments to come.

 

16 thoughts on “Felt Pod with Differential Shrinkage and Machine Lace

    1. Thanks, yes, every time you create with felt it seems you will learn something new. The problem is remembering all you learned! I usually write about everything I make and it still doesn’t hold sometimes.

  1. What a good idea to use embroidered stamens! I’ll try it next time. I am always having difficulties to make very slim and tiny stamens. Thanks.

    1. Thanks Petra! I really like to add machine embroidery to felt so this is one way that works well for me. And as you say, it is hard to felt tiny stamens.

  2. It’s a great idea to incorporate the free motion stamens – look forward to seeing your next attempt when you re-think the colours.
    The shape is fab.

    1. Thanks Lyn, I agree the stamens work really well. And my next attempt will be posted next week, the stamens and color are improved but the end result was not as expected. Ah felt, always doing what it wants to do. 🙂

    2. That’s why we keep doing it – as Forest Gump may have said if he was a member of the forum “Felting is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re going to get.”

  3. Great for you to share your thinking – both planning and reflecting what went well and what you’d do differently next time. Looking forward to seeing what happens next!

    1. Thanks Lindsay! I try to share both the bad and the good. I usually learn more from my mistakes. More mistakes coming soon 🙂

  4. Looking forward to seeing your next version.
    Your post reminded me of a version of Thomas Edison’s quote….“I have not failed 10,000 times. I have not failed once. I have succeeded in proving that those 10,000 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”

    I think this should be our mantra.

  5. The stamens are a great idea. A well-done experiment and yes no matter how much we learn we seem to forget until it’s too late. then we go, Of course, I knew that.

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