Ever since I saw the December 2024 issue of “Felt Matters”, the magazine produced by the International Feltmakers Association, my interest in making felted lights has been rekindled.  Since several recent posts have included confessions of failed projects, I thought I’d add mine to the list.

I started off making small globe lights by covering small spherical glass bowls in felt and placing them upside down on a felted base on which I had a magnetic puck light.  (I’d sewn lids from baked bean cans – painted to match the felt globe cover, to the base for the lights to “stick” to.)  These actually worked well.

I only had three bowls so had to look for a different design for the next light

. For some time I have been fascinated by the idea of making a sphere within a sphere in felt and have been racking my brain trying to work out how to do it. I finally decided that I could use a resist consisting of a large circle and a smaller circle joined together by a “neck”. Once felted it should be possible to push the smaller sphere through the neck into the larger sphere and the whole thing would sit on the base of the neck.

If I made the neck wide enough then I should be able to push a light source inside the inner sphere.  This of course would mean that the outer sphere would need to be pierced in some way so that the inner sphere could be seen and, hopefully, the light shine through when turned on.  The resist could be removed from the whole thing through the piercing, and the outer sphere could be fulled using tools through the piercings.  The inner sphere could be fulled before being inserted into the outer by having a balloon inserted through one of the piercings and then the neck and inflated.  Alternatively, once the outer sphere was completely fulled, the inner sphere could be inverted and inserted into it and a balloon inserted through the neck. That would probably be better as otherwise the inner sphere might end up bigger than the outer – something to be avoided.

Next I cogitated on the steps necessary for the idea to work.  The inner sphere would need to be of fine felt for the light to shine through, but of course it would not be strong enough to keep its shape without some assistance.  I then wondered if some help here might be given by incorporating nuno felting fabric.  If most of the fabric had little or no fibres attached the light might shine through there, and of course I could always resort to PVA glue to help with the strength.  After several sessions of trying to visualise the process 🤔😓 I worked out that the inner sphere would be turned inside out when it was pushed through the neck into the outer.  So I would need to place the fabric face down to the resist with some fibres underneath as well as on the back, especially at the fabric edges, to make sure that it all combined when felted.

As for the outer sphere, I thought that this should be much thicker felt so that it would keep it’s shape on its own, and perhaps have a different fabric included. I debated whether to have the fabric on the outside or the inside or perhaps both.  In the end I decided I’d have it on the outside only and I could cut some shapes in the outer sphere for the inner sphere and the light to be seen through.

Next I set about choosing the fibres and fabrics I would use.

I knew that the fabric with the coloured stripes (from a charity/thrift shop blouse) would felt very easily even though I thought it was polyester, or possibly viscose, as I had used it before.  I had not used the flowered fabric before (from another charity/thrift shop blouse) but I was sure that it would felt because I had used a very similar fabric with great success.  I had mixed some merino fibres to match the colours in the striped fabric and would use that for the smaller sphere.  For the larger sphere, I had some darker coloured fibres which were coarser than the merino, and I thought that they would make a stronger felt, and they were exactly the right colour to go with the nuno fabric.  I would use those fibres for the neck of the resist as well.

Here are the progress pictures:

I set about the felting with a will.  I had no trouble with the smaller sphere, it felted very (too?) easily, but I was having trouble with the other end.  I just supposed that the courser fibres needed a little more elbow grease.  I tried the usual trick of just leaving it to settle and going back to it next day.

Ha! Here’s what I found:

The fibres hadn’t even skinned over, let alone penetrated the fabric.  So I took a small amount of the remaining fibres and did what I should have done before I used them – tried to felt a ball.  No, I couldn’t.  So I took off all the fibres from that end and the neck of the resist.

I really don’t know what the fibres were.  I suppose they could have been mohair or superwash. I was really annoyed with myself.  As I didn’t know what the fibres were or where I’d got them from (possibly a Guild sales table) I should have done the felt test before I used them.  I was even more annoyed because I did not have any other fibres the same colour and it did match the fabric I wanted to use. 🤬

On closer inspection I found that the fibres were in fact a blend of several colours, so I collected together some known merino fibres that should make a similar blend and set to on my drum carder.

I was still thinking about cutting shapes out of the outer sphere once it was felted and I decided to have a go at putting supplementary resists between the fabric and the fibres so that I would be able to cut paisley shapes.

Having cut these shapes out of masking tape and stuck them onto the fabric I then realised that I was probably going to have difficulty in making the cuts while the main resist was still inside the felted shape.  I was just about ready to give up at this stage.  But, gritting my teeth, I decided that I would not do nuno felt on the outer sphere, I’d get some thin lengths of merino in the colours of the nuno fabric on the inner sphere, use those for surface decoration and decide later on the type of cuts I would do.  That also meant that I would need to darken the blend of merino fibres I’d created for the outer sphere otherwise the decoration wouldn’t be very visible.

Fibres laid out and felted ready for final fulling, I decided that I would make a cut in the neck of the shape to take the resist out.

That way I did not need to decide on the cuts I would make to the outer sphere yet. Once I’d completed the fulling I’d stitch up the cut.  Also I would need to turn the inner sphere inside out to see if my nuno idea had worked and if it needed anything doing to before it was pushed inside the outer sphere, and I could do that through the neck cut.

It was as well that I did as, even though I did not use much merino, the fabric was almost obscured by the felt.  Out came the razor and the balloon.  I inserted and inflated the balloon and set to to give the sphere a shave.  Perhaps I should have asked my husband to do the shaving, though he’s had a beard for the last 50 odd years so he might have made as big a hash of it as I did.  Good job fabric doesn’t bleed!

I gave up at that stage.  I cut the outer sphere into sepal shapes – cutting them too far down so that they flop around tiredly, and poked the inner sphere through the neck so that the right side was showing and then threw the whole lot into the “I never want to see it again” box.

Here are the final pictures which I hope will show you how the sphere within a sphere should have worked.

Back to the drawing board. 😮‍💨