Lyn

Seagulls worldwide are looking forward to easy, rich pickings on ‘Ice Cream Day’.

President Reagan wanted to dedicate a day to one of America’s favourite desserts and it’s now internationally accepted to be the third Sunday in July – this year it falls on the 19^th.

So I made a felt sketch to celebrate my favourite ice cream, a Mr Whippy 99!  It’s a traditional ice cream in the UK – soft ice cream twirled into a cone with a stick of Cadbury’s Flake chocolate.  Optional extras are hundreds and thousands or fruit sauces.

It’s wet felted, using handmade merino felt inlays, then detailed with needle felting when dry.

I wanted the ‘hundreds and thousands’ to be round and clear – had I wet felted them in they would have lost their clarity and been a bit fuzzy.

I tried to needle felt them on but mostly the nepps were too hard to do so.  After a bit of thinking I decided that as the picture was just for me, I would stick them on!

Firstly I tried a sample.  I speared a nepp with a felting needle to dunk it into some neat PVA then pushed it onto some scrap pre-felt using the end of the felting needle.

I waited a few hours for it to dry and found that it had stuck well.  So I finished my ice cream … eventually … but it took longer than I anticipated!

With all this hot weather it’s plenty of ice creams in the garden then!  If you have young ones to entertain during the summer holidays, here’s an idea from Anna and Clara.  It’s a fabric printing project involving flowers from the garden, a piece of scrap fabric and a hammer – children love hammering stuff.

The printed fabric can then be used to make, for example, bunting.

https://sostrenegrene.com/en-gb/diy/print-flowers-on-fabric-d-21966

I gave it a quick go but ignored the advice on choice of flowers and I paid the price.  The fushcia was too thick and turned into a splodge!

I picked 2 flowers and 1 leaf to try this project.

This was the resulting printed fabric.

And Annie finally finished her hydrangea picture!  It’s approx 60cm x 85cm (23″ x 33″) and was a bit of trial to complete in a small work space (the space is smaller than it should be cos it’s rammed full of wool and fabrics and other supplies!).  Time to think about some smaller projects for a while!

The really hot weather is not so much fun, but enjoy the long days and time in the garden because it won’t be long before we’re moaning about the cold and dark!