This is an old post from several years ago of some fun bubbles I did with a friend. I thought you might like to see it again. This last weekend was our guild sale, and I have nothing to show you felt wise. Jan has so many pictures of the sale to show you, I will leave that post to her. I have such fond memories of this friend and our felt journey.
A while back, I went to a felting friend’s for a few days of fun. She showed me how to make bubbles and cut them open to great effect. Here are the pictures of what I did.
First of course, I laid out some wool to felt. But these are samples, so plain felt won’t do. I added silk threads, a silk square, some silk roving and other wools to see how it would all go. This is the underside.
This is what the top side looks like
Then, of course, there was the usual rolling and fulling.
Here they are all finished and ready for the marbles.
The next step is to put marbles in while it is still damp. You pull the felt tightly around the marble and secure it with an elastic, and now it looks like a bubble. We used the elastics they use to put braids in horses’ tails and manes because they are small, stretchy, strong and cheap. You put in as many as you like and whatever sizes you like. You can also use felt balls. The felt balls are good if you want to leave them uncut. Marbles are too heavy for that.
Here they are all tied up.
Here they are cut. I cut the tops off, I cut x’s and star patterns, and some I turned inside out. If you cut more off, you see more of the inside, and you can stretch them flatter, too.
You can see how the underside becomes the inside of the bubbles. These samples started out about 6×8 inches, and the finished pieces are about 1.5 by 2.5 inches. They take up a lot of room. I only have 2 of them left; my friend’s dog ate one. I think I will glue them to some leather and make brooches out of them. They are lots of fun to do. I made some wrist cuffs with this method, and I will blog about them next week.