Lyn

I’d originally planned to make an autumn leaf garland, so I made a large piece of felt patterned only on one side as all the leaves would face the same way. It comprised three fine layers of green merino wool fibres topped with one layer of autumn colour merino wool fibres and ‘bits’ of fabric and nepps. Dry layout with close up shown below.

I made a cardboard leaf template to enable me to cut out 30 leaves.

The leaves were stabilised all around the cut edges with watered down PVA, 50/50.  When they were dry I stitched a wire stem to each leaf held in place with thread.

When Annie and I saw the pile of leaves looking as if they had just fallen off a tree, we both thought they would make a lovely seasonal display for a cold fireplace or a large sideboard.  Annie had the perfect colour and shape jug (it was in use in Annie’s house with a display of dahlias but they were nearly finished so reluctantly they got discarded before their time) then Annie went twig hunting in her garden.  After much snipping and choosing and changing our minds, we ended up with this.

Then came the fiddly job of attaching the leaves … without disturbing the arrangement of the twigs and the leaves already in place … not easy … my swear jar is almost full.

Annie

Making a tea cosy has been on my project list for a long time.  In my imagination it has been many themes over time as the seasons and celebrations come and go and none of them have come to be, but suddenly the time was right and my tea cosy has been born as a pumpkin!

It was reasonably quick to make and was a bit of experimental fun.  I am surprised it turned out as well as it did!

I made a couple of samples that helped me test some fabrics (which if I’m honest were going to be a garland but I ran out of steam and moved on to the tea cosy!).  The samples were small at 11cm wide and 18cm wide, see below.

I decided the tea cosy had way more chance of getting finished if I kept it really simple. So I just made two separate sides and stitched them together, adding in a stalky handle at the top, rather than a more complicated and time consuming seamless 3D form.

I was also going to embellish it with a “carved” face but decided against it to give it more year round appeal.

I started with the handle as that seemed most fun as I had not tried a curly cord before.  The cord needed a flat end to be stitched into the seam.  It was not very technical.  I got a small piece of green prefelt then wrapped loose green fibres around it then added a tapered amount on the top that I would make into a cord and then let it dry twisted around a paintbrush.  It worked surprisingly well.  I made it far too big forgetting that the felt of the pumpkins would shrink, but I just cut the end off to make it shorter.

I had planned to make some prefelt to lay on to the flat sides to enhance the creases and shaping but then I changed my mind and just reshaped the fibres I had laid out into two pumpkin shapes.  I used a paper template and reversed it for one side so that I could keep the pumpkin sides roughly the same size and shape during felting.  To give a little extra firmness I added a thin rope of fibres around the outline.

I added fabric scraps and knobbly yarns to give an abstract pumpkin look to the skin.  There were so many interesting pumpkins in all shapes, sizes, colours and textures at our local garden centre so I made my own variety taking inspiration from several different ones.

 

I decided to stitch it together right sides out to keep some of the uneven edge, rather than sewing and turning.  And no it’s not lined, life is too short for that!

Lyn

To make a star garland I made a large piece of multi-coloured, merino wool felt.  It was liberally topped with silk fibres in green, red, gold and pink but disappointingly they mostly sank into the wool fibres during felting instead of shining brightly on the top!  Dry layout photos below.

When the felt was dry, 11 star shapes were cut out – 1 large, 4 medium and 6 small – then the edges were stabilised with pva/water mix (50/50).

Simple hand stitching was added using a very fine, sparkly gold Madeira thread.  The thread is very thin so 4 strands were used at a time – yes – it was often a tangle nightmare!

Small star brads were easy to push into the felt.

Here is a close-up of 3 stars – the large star is 17.5cm (7”) wide.

The garland was strung with Madeira metallic effect yarn.  It’s very strong but lightweight and has no stretch.

The star garland has a ‘wing span’ of 180cm (6 feet) so I was unable to pull the camera far enough away to get it all in and the detail would have been lost – so I spread it out on my craft table and photographed it in two halves!

There are 11 stars – the centre star is in both photos.

Right half

Left half