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.