Lindsay Wilkinson Artwork

Needle-felt Brooches and a Print Exhibition

January 11, 2026 Lindsay Wilkinson Artwork Comments 18 comments

Since my last blog in November I’ve been very busy, though not necessarily making felt. I did, however, have a week’s exhibition with two friends in a local gallery the second week in December, and this afternoon I’ve dropped off 12 pictures for an open-call print exhibition, so that’s what I’m going to talk about today.

Sitting in the gallery, I had time to do a little needle felting – I generally prefer wet felting but needle felting is better suited to gallery-sitting. My friend Lynzi (yep, same name but different spelling) asked if I’d make two small brooches for her to give to her mother for Christmas. Lynzi liked some earrings I’d made previously …..

….. so asked me to make a mussel shell and a starfish brooch. I’d not needle felted a brooch before but didn’t think it would be very different from an earring so I set about it.

The trickiest thing was that she wanted them very small: she suggested between 2 & 4 cm. The smallest mussel shell earrings I’ve ever made were about 5.5cm and the star fish – which was a one-off – was considerably larger. I didn’t think 2cm was practical, not least of all because of the size of the pin needed to attach the brooches, so we agreed on approximately 4cm. The mussel shell was relatively straightforward. For earrings I make them curved like shells. For a brooch, I just made the back solid rather than curved and was sure to felt it very firmly so I could sew the fastening pin securely onto it.

I had to adapt the starfish design as the centre of the starfish – which had to conceal the brooch pin – had to be a larger part of the overall design than it was for the earring. I started off using a small star-shaped cookie-cutter to help me get an even star shape. I concentrated on working the length of the arms and the centre of the starfish, so that when I stopped using the cookie-cutter I could work into the sides of the arms to make it less like a star and more like a starfish.

Here are the end results.

Lynzi was delighted and I’m looking forward to hearing what her Mum thought.

Now here we are in 2026 and I’ve had to put in quite a lot of studio time this week to create work for a print exhibition. Another local gallery (The Horsebridge Community Arts Centre in Whitstable) had an open-call for a print exhibition. The only requirement was that pieces had to have some element of hand printing. I wondered if my felt pictures with a printed tree would meet the criteria so had a chat with the organiser. She said ‘yes’ so I decided to enter some. The deal is that you pay per piece for a framed, wall hung item and you can put up to 5 unframed items per wall piece into a browser. The gallery takes 10% commission on sales of the framed pieces (which you’ve also paid to submit) and 35% commission on the unframed, browser pieces (which you haven’t paid to submit). I opted for 2 framed and 10 for the browser.

These were the framed pictures I already had

And two unframed pictures presented with a card back and mount.

So, I just needed to make 8 more unframed pictures this week to fill my quota for the wall and browser. That didn’t seem too unreasonable when I decided to do it, but it has felt a bit less sensible given the time I’ve had available. It’s also quite cold here (for England). My studio is in an old industrial building (it used to be a bottle capping factory for Shepherd Neame, the oldest brewery in the UK). It has very little heating, so I had to decamp to my house part way through the week when my hands just could not cope with any more freezing water.

The unframed pictures have a mount with an aperture of 20 x 20 cm (about 8 x 8 inches) so the felt is about 24 cm square. I thought the best idea was to make 4 pictures in one sheet and cut them apart during the fulling process. By ‘best’ I mean most efficient while still being a size I could handle on my felting table. I drew myself a little sketch to help me decide where to put the silk

Option 1 would mean the nuno felted area was the same in all 4 pictures so it was an easy decision to go for option 2.

I spent quite a long time sifting through my embarrassingly large collection of second hand silk scarves to select the pieces I wanted to use.

I was keen on a grey leopard print scarf with a white background but it had stripes of more and less dense silk running across it. I thought I should just check that the dense section would felt OK so I did a very scrappy little sample. If you’re wondering why I got so little shrinkage, the felted scrap started off considerably bigger than the non-felted one.

It’s not easy to see here – more visible on the finished picture – but the more dense stripes produced a little more ruching.

It all seemed to felt fine so above you can see the first batch part way through the fulling stage.

Below is the layout for the second batch of pictures

I put a stripe of second hand wool (usually tapestry wool) along the top of the silk section. For the brightly coloured marbled scarf I auditioned a few different colours (red, yellow, dark brown, green)

And went with the green

So, here is the first group of 4 pictures with their printed trees

And here’s the second group of 4

I took the photos very hastily today and not in very good light: they are not as grey as some of the images suggest.

I’ve presented them with a back board and white mount and dropped them off at the gallery this afternoon. The deadline for submissions is tomorrow so, that’s pretty good for me. I have marked ‘last minute’ tendencies.

I print the images with a heat press – the kind of thing you might use for printing and image on a t-shirt. As I was heating it up anyway, I pulled together some pieces of felt that were test pieces or offcuts, cut them into small pieces and printed on those too. I will make these into cards.

Well, that’s me for now. Wishing everyone a joyful, healthy and creative 2026.

Felting Glasses Cases

November 8, 2025 Lindsay Wilkinson Artwork Comments 20 comments

Although a recent eye test showed I didn’t need a new prescription, I decided to buy some new glasses anyway to give me more colour/style choices and also hopefully reduce the time I spend trying to find my glasses. I have a place at home where they’re supposed to live but I often thoughtlessly plonk them down somewhere and then get cross with myself as I play hunt the glasses.

On seeing my new glasses’ accompanying dull acrylic felt cases, I decided to make some wet felted wool cases of my own, either for myself, or to sell or give as gifts.

I want the cases to fit snugly, so that the glasses don’t slip out but also don’t need any kind of closure fastening: a simple wet felted sleeve. I like the simplicity of this idea and also the challenge of working them to exactly the right size.

While on holiday recently, I bought a carded (mostly) Wensleydale wool batt from a farmers’ market in Ithaca, New York, that I thought might be suitable and I was looking forward to trying it out.

Here’s some of the batt, the work of Windsong Farm in Burdett NY www.windsongfarm.com

I like a sturdy glasses case as it has to withstand being bashed about in my capacious handbag, so I decided on 4 layers of wool: two natural white merino tops and two of the Wensleydale batt – which includes quite a lot of locks.

I calculated a generous size for the case and multiplied the finished dimensions by 1.7 to give me a nice firm felt.

And here it is dry: side 1, side 2 and end-on to show how thick the felt is.

I was happy with the result, though because of the thickness and shrinkage it took quite a long time to felt it fully.

My second case I decided to treat more like a seascape picture. First, I rounded the corners on one end of the resist to give the case a more rounded bottom. I laid out two layers of wool: pewter for the top half that would become the sea and white for the lower half, that would become the beach.

I laid two layers of blues with white angora highlights over the pewter section to form the sea, and two more white layers topped with a strip of very sheer recycled spotted silk scarf which I hoped would look like pebbles for the beach.

I then ran a line of kid mohair top along the length of the case where the sea meets the beach to form a wave. I find this type of mohair felts with a nice wiggle that suggests a breaking wave.

Joining the silk so as not to leave a gap or have a bulky overlap was a bit fiddly but I find it works most easily with a very sheer silk. It’s interesting how dominant the wave looks in the photo because of the curvature of the sides.

Once that was done, it occurred to me that perhaps people view their glasses cases more in portrait mode than landscape? I decided case 3 would be less ‘landscape’! I also started to think more about how people use glasses cases. I’m sure some, like me, have them rattling around in a large bag. But I suppose some people want to put them in a pocket, so may want something a little thinner?

As I was rummaging in one of the giant boxes of charity shop silk scarves I’ve collected for nuno felting, I found a very sheer small orange scarf with wonky purple circles that I thought I’d try for case number 3. I laid out 4 very fine layers of orange merino tops (to reduce the overall thickness).

My plan was for the orange of the silk to merge with the orange of the wool so that the circles were more prominent than their background. I added three pieces silk to each side of the case.

4 thin layers, of merino, 3 wonky silk circles per side laid out then prefelted ready to full

I’m still felting these very firmly. You can see the shrinkage when comparing the finished case to its resist. I’m not completely sure why, but I’m getting more shrinkage in the width than the length. Probably it’s because it’s easier to roll it in that direction, using my hands and various thicknesses of pool noodle inside the case during fulling. Whatever the reason, it’s nice and firm so I can afford to chop a bit off the length of the resist.

Left – finished & dry; top right – testing the fit; bottom right – showing the shrinkage

For case 4 I decide to go thinner still (I’m thinking of someone putting their glasses in a jacket breast pocket) so switch to 2 layers of wool – this time a natural marled grey merino – which I think looks quite pebble-like. I added a little white wool to the surface to enhance the pebble look.

I forgot to take progress shots but here is the finished case.

It is definitely thinner and a little softer, though it’s still felted very firmly.

Now I’m starting to think about the time these cases are taking to felt. I have a week in a gallery in December and will also be offering some things for sale in two other galleries that that have a local handmade artesan ‘market’ throughout December. I could sell some cases as they might make nice gifts, but I’m not sure how much people will be willing to pay for a glasses case.

Cases are generally supplied free when you buy glasses and I know most people have no idea how long something like this takes to make. There’s not a whole lot I can do but I thought that making two at once may reduce the making time a little.

So, cases 5 and 6 will be twins. I cut a new double-length resist and laid out some natural marled grey Corriedale wool.

I like the white veining on the merino ‘pebble’ case but it’s fairly subtle so I add more of it to these ones.

Top: double-size resist with wool laid out and wetted tightly round the resist. Middle: case 5 (rounded bottom). Bottom: case 6 (rounded both ends)

I keep twin one (case 5) the same as the previous cases, with a rounded bottom and flat top, and cut a rounded top of twin two (case 6) to make it overall more symmetrical. Actually, I really like the symmetry of this rounded one, but realise that the top is a bit more flimsy than previous cases: presumably because I’m overlapping more wool at the ends of the resist than in the middle, where I have cut these two apart.

Because I prefer the single to the twin cases, I decide to make the next pair alongside each other but separate.

I have some lightly prefelted ‘pebbles’ that I made earlier, so set these out on the bottom halves of two resists (on two layers of merino wool) with 4 layers of blue & green merino wool and strands of white angora on the top half to create the idea of sea.

Left – layout; right – prefelted

I soon abandoned working on both at the same time as the pebbles were a bit tricky to felt round so many corners so I worked on the two separately

Comparing the finished one with the wetted out one, you can see that I lost quite a bit of the pebble definition but I’m still fairly happy with them and they are very sturdy. Indeed, when dry and lightly shaved you can see more of the pebbles, in particular the nuno elements.

I have some Corriedale wool that I dyed ages ago (to make this bag)….

….so for the next pair I go for a blue, green, purple colour fade.

This time I use just 2 layers of wool and they are (not surprisingly) considerably thinner and slightly smaller than the previous pair. They are also much quicker to produce as the layout is fairly simple.

Finished: cases 7 & 8 colour-fade hand-dyed Corriedale

For number 9 I try lightly prefelting 2 mussel shells (one for each side) which I felt into a sandy-coloured background.

Left & middle – layouts side 1 & 2. Right – nearly finished case

I only made this yesterday and it’s still a bit damp. The finished image isn’t a great photo as I’ve taken it in domestic electric light but it gives you the overall impression.

And finally, another recycled scarf but this one is white dots on a red background from a fairly open-weave wool fabric.

To get round the fiddliness of joining / overlapping fabric on this size and shape of resist, I cut out two sections of the scarf and laid one on each side, with gaps along all the sides.

Here’s the layout and here’s a photo of the finished glasses case. I only made this today so it’s very wet. I’m hoping the dots will be a little clearer when it’s dry.

So, what have I learned from all this? Well, I’ve enjoyed playing with all the different layouts. I drew up a list of ideas and I haven’t even completed half of them so there’s plenty more to play at when I have time.

I think my favourite more complex ones are the combined pebbles & sea. For the more simple layouts I like both the grey & white pebbles and the blue / green / purple hand-dyed Corriedale ones. To sell the glasses cases I will have to focus on the simple ones as the more complex layouts take way too much time to make. I’ve already made a couple more of the grey & white pebble ones and will probably make a few more simple brightly coloured ones before I move onto other things. I’m not sure yet which ones I will keep or give as gifts. Do you have a favourite? Or any you don’t like?

Playing with prefelt

September 7, 2025 Lindsay Wilkinson Artwork Comments 16 comments

In May this year, I wrote about about a vessel I’d made for an exhibition called ‘Edge’. Although this hadn’t been the intention, the vessel gave me a sort of Japanese minimalism vibe, which was something I wanted to revisit.

The vessel fit the Edge brief in that I’d used a circular resist to create the shape but rather than cut the hole in the centre of the circle, I’d stood it on one edge, with the hole on the opposite edge. I like this shape and want to explore it further.

The fibre I’d used was something I also want to come back to. A beautiful fine carded merino and silk mix from World of Wool, it was time-consuming to lay out because of the short staple-length, but produced a lovely, light and velvety soft felt.

Before leaping into making something with so many variables of shape, surface design and fibre, I knew I needed to make some samples and decided to think first about the surface design.

I have no real knowledge of Japanese minimalist art and am not trying to replicate it, just play around with some of the simplicity of design and colours as inspiration. I love problem-solving (or perhaps that’s problem-investigating) so was setting myself a bit of a challenge.

I’ve seen various images of beautiful Japanese brush work using black ink brush strokes and red circles on a white background and I wondered if I could create something like that in felt. The biggest challenge seemed to be how to wet felt black, red and white together while keeping the colours separate. Prefelt seemed to be one way to go so I made three different black prefelts to see which might look like black ink brush strokes.

Using commercial black merino prefelt, I cut a strip and felted it a little. I didn’t think this would work well as it’s the cut ends that move most into the surrounding fibres and this strip is basically all cut edges. Next, I tried lightly prefelting two other types of black merino wool: carded and tops, as if I was starting to make felt rope.

The tops and carded wool produced very similar-looking results and I confess, when I got to the making bit, I lost track of which was which. The advantage of these was that the fibres are mainly running along the length of the line rather than sticking out of the sides so there should be less migration into the white. I decided I’d use these rather than the commercial prefelt strip.

I then turned my attention to red circles. I suspect carded wool might be best but I only have tops in red so that was what I used. First, I just tried making a circle freehand. I got about 2/3 of a circle and a raggedy bit. On the plus side, there weren’t cut edges, so that should help minimise side-to-side fibre migration. On the minus side, the shape left a lot to be desired! Needs further work.

Next, I made some red prefelt and cut a couple of circles out of it. I thought this would work less well but I was interested to see how they compared with the freehand idea.

I was aiming for a very simple design, so played around arranging black strands and red circles in different combinations.

Now to actually make a sample.

I used a rectangle of white silk and merino commercial prefelt for speed, and felted it together with three black strips and a red circle to see what happened.

As you can see, the black didn’t migrate much on the long sides, though it did where I’d cut the shorter pieces (on the ends on the left side). The lines did, however, crimp and move a bit – maybe I need to prefelt these a bit less on the length and definitely more on any cut ends. Also, I must keep a better check on any movement as I felt.

The red, on the other hand, probably needed prefelting more as there was quite a lot of migration there. Basically, far too many loose cut ends, so either felt the edges harder or go back to a different layout.

At this point, I wonder why the heck I’m doing this: the layout looks so much better than the felted piece. Nevertheless, I decide to make a quick second sample before I finish for the day.

This time I used the freehand red circle with the raggedy edge. Somewhere in the dusty corners of my brain, I’d started to think about using resists to reveal the colours rather than just laying them on the surface. I hadn’t actually developed this thought but just plonked a resist on top of the red felt and laid a second layer of the white over the whole of the piece. I had some vague thoughts about the red incomplete circle looking a bit like a setting sun so placed it near the bottom and thought I could perhaps print some flying bird silhouettes on the upper part afterwards.

OK, I’m sort of freewheeling by this stage.

The useful learning from my experiments thus far was that the freehand circle (which has fibres running around the circumference of the circle, therefore avoiding lots of ends sticking out) works much better. You can see this very clearly from the under side. The cut ends clearly also migrate much more up and down as well as side to side. The freehand shape was probably also felted a bit harder than the red prefelt sheet.

Sample 1 underside: lots of migration round the edges

For my final two test pieces, I lightly needle-felted some red circles then wet-felted the edges to make them as neat as possible. I went back to using the original white carded 70:30 merino:silk mix and decided to concentrate on getting the red circle right. I laid out two layers of fibre at right-angles to each other and put a needle felted circle top right.

The needle-felted circle felted in well and when it was dry I printed a tree onto it. It’s a bit big but I’m going to make this into a birthday card for my Mum.

For my final test piece I continued with the carded merino & silk batt. I laid four layers of fibre round a circular resist and added one needle-felted red circle on each side.

As with my earlier Edge vessel, I cut it on one of the edges (rather than in the centre of the circle) and designed it to sit on the opposite edge.

Part-way through fulling, I worried that one of the red circles hadn’t felted in very well so did a little judicious needle felting around its edges before finishing the vessel.

This is a lot smaller than my original ‘edge’ vessel and much sturdier.

Conclusions?

The needle-felted and freehand wet-felted circles work better than cutting the circles from prefelt. I like the effect though could maybe make the need-felted circles a bit thinner: they do look as if they’re partially sitting on top of the surface. I’m happy that I’ve more or less cracked that bit of my challenge. As for the black lines, I’m leaving them for now but may come back to them at a later stage. The carded merino / silk batt was lovely to work with and I will definitely be making more things using this fibre. I might make a series of vessels using different colours and / or numbers of circles. I may also develop combining a circle and a printed tree. As usual, each experiment opens up lots of new possibilities. So much felt to make and too little time…..

Quicker and Cheaper?

July 7, 2025 Lindsay Wilkinson Artwork Comments 20 comments

For some years now I’ve been selling my work in local galleries and from a ‘fisherman’s hut’ in Whitstable harbour market.

For many traders in the harbour market, sales seem to have been down over the last year, and I’ve noticed that people are frequently buying smaller and cheaper things from everyone, like smaller pictures, or prints rather than original pictures. Sales in the galleries have held up a bit better for me so far.

I decided to see if I could produce some felt pictures more cheaply without compromising on quality.

I wrote here last September about having to make a lot of pictures for a big exhibition. I developed a new line of work that I could produce at speed. https://feltingandfiberstudio.com/2024/09/05/the-mother-of-invention/

I decided to take my nuno printed tree pictures one stage further to make them a little smaller (less felting time, fewer materials) and offer them unframed (lower material costs).

I’ve realised that using recycled silk or fine wool scarves is a quick way of creating patterns within a felt picture. It can significantly reduce layout time as your fabric does a lot of the work for you. I then thought that I could cut down on fulling time as well if I made two pictures at a time.

I then had a presentation question. I normally have my frames handmade by a local maker. Would I go down the mass-produced frame or the no frame route? I decided to start with the no frame option. I found a provider of inexpensive but good quality picture mount kits that include a back board, mount and cellophane bag.

I made the felt for four pairs of pictures; cutting them apart before printing a different tree on each. I took these photos as a record rather than to present so they’re not the best, sorry.

For the top pair I used a fine wool scarf, for the bottom two, a silk scarf

A recycled silk scarf provides the pattern for this pair

Do you have a favourite? I think the one top left is mine.

I had 5 weeks of sales / exhibitions in June (one of two weeks and one of three, overlapping – I know, poor planning) and sold 4 of the 8, so I’m pretty happy with this experiment. What next? I will probably make a few more of these and I might source some sample frames to go along with them. Maybe I’ll get my local frame-maker to make one then buy a couple of cheaper mass produced ones so people can see what the options are. Framing is much more expensive than many people realise. I’m also offering photos of some of my bird felt pictures, and prints of some of my (non-felt) photographs in the same unframed format. I’ve sold three of these so far so will see how they go.

I thought I’d finish with a follow up to my sample making blog from March. https://feltingandfiberstudio.com/2025/03/09/auditioning-fabrics/

I made each of the samples into cards and here they are.

Edge Exhibition

May 8, 2025 Lindsay Wilkinson Artwork Comments 16 comments

I live in a coastal town in SE England called Whitstable. As a member of a group called Made in Whitstable (a loose affiliation of local artists & makers) we had a group exhibition coming up with the title of “EDGE” at The Horsebridge – our wonderful local community arts centre. We needed to produce at least one item that fit the Edge brief, however we wanted to interpret it. The rest of our work was entirely up to us.

I could have got away with explaining that practically everything in my wet-felted pictures happens at the water’s edge, and it therefore met the brief. But I was actually quite excited to think through some new and different work. I particularly like working 3D and it feels like a while since I’ve felt really energised by the creative process. So, I thought about what ‘edge’ might mean and I ended up making 3 different interpretations.

Edge 1

For my first piece I pondered the edge of the felt as a focus of a picture.

I decided on a flat background with strips of felt jutting out to show their edges. I’ve made things like this using multiple resists to create flaps that then stand out. I wondered if I could pre-felt some strips before attaching, rather than creating flaps with resists in the lay-out stage.

I selected some home-dyed Corriedale wool I had left over from an old project. Just as I’d decided to use this I noticed how well the colours went with a second-hand silk scarf I’d just bought so I decided to use some of that too.

Home-dyed Corriedale wool and charity shop silk scarf

After I’d laid it out, leaving a fluffy edge to help attach it to the background, I realised I’d made it far too wide. “Oh well”, I thought, “I’ll cut it into strips once it’s prefelted”. I’d intended this to be a test for a more thought-through piece.

I decided to stick with what I’d done and move on to something else: I never made the more thought-through piece.

Edge 2

For my second piece I started to think about the outside edges of a shape. I decided I’d try using a book resist to make a vessel with a large surface area.

I scanned the internet for book resist ideas that didn’t have too many ‘pages’. I alighted on an article Gladys Paulus (a felting hero of mine) had written for DHG comparing bergschaf and merino wools in which she included a 3 page book resist.

https://dhgshop.it/blog/article-compares-carded-wool-bergschaf-and-merino_88.php

I decided I’d use a similar shape using black and white wool but would cut and shape it differently from Gladys’s.

I wanted to use carded batts as they’re much easier to lay out than tops / rovings when navigating complex shapes. I had a good supply of white Norwegian wool batts but was struggling to lay my hands on anything appropriate in black. I found a black merino batt and decided to go with that, though I wasn’t sure how the wools would interact, with the Norwegian being much more coarse than the merino.

The Norwegian wool was slow to felt and the black merino didn’t come through as much as I’d imagined. Interesting, if not surprising. Eventually I ended up with something that looked decidedly anatomical: three lungs was the most polite thing I could think of. I got a lot of comments about the anatomical possibilities of this one!

The vessel is an odd shape so I decided to embrace its oddness and bought some curved screw-in metal studs to add to the top of each segment. Given the brief was ‘edge’, I thought these would add a little extra edginess.

Edge 3

And, finally, I created a vessel using a circular resist that I would stand on its edge. I’d recently bought a carded merino and silk (70% : 30%) batt from World of Wool that I was dying to use – it is deliciously soft and scrumptious to feel.

I laid out the first layer clockwise around the resist, and the second in circles radiating from the centre.

Having wetted the fibre out, I turned it tightly over the resist then set about laying out another two fine layers in the same pattern. Or at least, that’s what I intended. Looking back, I think I got distracted and may have only laid out two layers on one side, as the reverse side feels decidedly thin and soft, despite long and patient fulling. Distracted? When I’m making something I’m finding fun, I tend to add lots of “what if”s and “how about”s instead of sticking to my original plan. See the ‘ooh, shall I add some silk’ for Edge 1. On this occasion my “how about”s included a stripe of mohair tops, a dark circle cut from Edge 2’s offcuts (one on each side) and a strip of curly locks. Fun, but not very scientific.

Anyhoo, here’s Edge 3. It does feel lovely and is very light but I wish I’d paid more attention to the layout. I’m tempted to make something similar with a 6 layer layout.

In the meantime, here’s my exhibition space. I was pleased with the results and had very much enjoyed making three experimental pieces.

Before I leave you, I thought I’d show you a natural phenomenon I saw while I was making my edge pieces. Being lucky enough to live by the coast, I often have a speed walk in the morning by way of exercise and enjoyment. It was a clear and sunny early morning when I noticed some mist rolling in. I saw a puzzling white arc in the sky – sort of like a rainbow except it wasn’t raining. I decided it might be a ‘mistbow’ and looked it up when I got home. Turns out it’s called a ‘fogbow’. It’s unusual as you have to have very specific conditions: enough mist or fog to reflect the sunlight but a low sun behind you which isn’t obscured by the mist / fog. The water droplets in mist are very small so don’t refract the light like raindrops do, they just reflect it. It’s also called a ghost rainbow. I saw this photo while I was uploading the images for this post and thought you might be interested. I’d never even heard of such a thing but I found it really lovely.

Auditioning Fabrics

March 9, 2025 Lindsay Wilkinson Artwork Comments 16 comments

I’m always buying second hand fabric to use in felt-making. Mostly scarves but occasionally garments or just pieces of fabric, almost always from charity shops. Much of the time, I have a good idea of how the fabric will felt. But sometimes I really don’t know, either because it’s unusual in some way or because I’m not sure what it’s made of.

This week I tried out (or ‘auditioned’) four such fabrics, so here’s what I found.

Firstly, this soft rather loose-weave fabric I found in the British Red Cross shop in Canterbury.

The ‘prickle test’: I touched it lightly to my neck and it prickled so I concluded it contained at least some wool. I have an annoyingly sensitive skin that can’t wear even the softest wool so this prickle is a good sign. It’s a big scarf and I really like the pattern so I bought it, even though it was a bit more than I’d normally pay. I could imagine using it in a tree picture like this one I talked out in a previous blog.

I cut off a very miserly small strip then decided to make it even smaller – a 5 x 5 cm square (2 x 2 inches) – I just wanted to see if it felted without wasting any. I had a tiny amount of miscellaneous white carded batt loitering on the side of my felting table so I used that to felt it.

As you see, it felted really well so I set up a bigger strip to make some cards.

Then I decided not to get ahead of myself so put that on one side to pick up later and got on to fabric number two.

This flowery mesh fabric was from a scarf I bought a while ago. I think I bought it in Faversham Hospices of Hope.

I’ve used fabric similar to this to make barnacles on felt shells before, though it had a smaller woven pattern. I’ve no idea what either fabric is made from.

Barnacles added to a felted oyster shell using a similar fabric

This time I decided to make a slightly larger sample I could use to make cards, assuming it felted OK. Sometimes I just throw caution to the wind!

I laid it on a piece of the merino & silk prefelt I use for my printed felt cards and felted it.

It felted nicely. The mesh didn’t bed into the wool as much as I’d expected, so it’s more textured between the flowers, which was interesting. I will cut this into four strips and print something on the plain half to make cards like the ones I’ve shown in the next section.

I decided I liked the idea of a larger sample for cards rather than the tiny sample I can’t use.

So, here is fabric three.

I bought this a couple of weeks ago in Yorkshire Cancer Research in Ilkley. It feels like it might be a very sheer silk but there’s no label and I’m not sure. Hand rolled hems are often an indication of silk but this has machined hems. I love the pattern and it didn’t cost too much so I decided to take a chance.

Irritatingly, I cut the silk a bit too small for the prefelt rectangle offcut I was using so I popped a second small strip on the end hoping it would make that end useable.

It felted really easily and well, so I’m pretty sure it is indeed a sheer silk. I can see lots of uses for this as it has such a ‘coastal’ pattern. Also, I think the join worked OK.

It’s similar to another scarf I’ve used recently for pictures and cards, so I’m very happy. One of the drawbacks of using second hand scarves is that you can’t go and buy more of the same if you decide you really like it.

A similar scarf I’ve used in previous pictures and cards

And finally, a large, fairly open weave, 100% wool scarf I bought in a Pilgrim’s Hospice shop in Whitstable. No need for the prickle test (though it would undoubtedly have passed) as it still has its label.

I dithered over this one even though it wasn’t expensive. I just wasn’t sure I’d use that much brown. It’s also quite bulky and I’m short of storage space. However, I decided I could use the brown for beach pebbles on pictures and the animal print sections won me over. I love a bit of animal print.

Wool fabric laid out on prefelt (left) and after felting (right). It doesn’t look much different here though, felted, it’s shrunk by about 30%

Actually, I really like the result, more than I expected for some reason. I find that wool fabric felts really evenly – not surprisingly, I suppose. The fabric shrinks with the prefelt rather than rouching like silk does. I will use this sample piece for cards but I’m not sure what I’ll use the rest of the scarf for. It definitely reminds me of an animal’s fur but I’m not sure quite what animal.

Well, all four fabrics passed the auditions with flying colours. They all felted well. I can immediately see how I’ll use the first (wool mix?) one and the sheer silk. I’ll mentally ‘file’ the other two for use at some point in the future.

I love looking out for second-hand fabrics. You never know what you’ll find and what you might be able to do with them. A delicious pre-loved scarf always feels to me like some kind of exciting unearthed treasure.

Repurposing and Card Making

January 8, 2025 Lindsay Wilkinson Artwork Comments 20 comments

Around mid-November I was rummaging in a chest of drawers trying to create space for visitors to store their clothes, while also thinking about making some felt Christmas cards to sell at various events. I came across a scarf I’d felted more than 10 years ago and never done anything with.

‘Hmmm…..’ I thought. ‘This is taking up space and I’ll never wear it.’

Why not? Firstly, I can’t wear wool next to my skin. I find it way too prickly/itchy. And secondly, I didn’t like how it had felted. You could almost see the little thought bubble appear above my head: “I wonder if I could make some Christmas cards out of this?”

The scarf didn’t fit the bill for a traditional Christmassy look, but that’s one of the things that appealed to me about it.

Let’s first go back to the scarf-making, in April / March 2014. No, I’m not an exceptional record-keeper, I just have a lot of photos on my phone and happily they’re all automatically dated.

I started off with a bright orange silk scarf I’d found in a charity shop. It was what I think of as raw silk: soft and loosely woven. I wasn’t even sure it would felt well but, foolish as I was in those days, it didn’t occur to me to make a sample, I just ploughed on optimistically.

I decided to add shapes in bright rainbow colours so made a big sheet of multi-coloured merino wool light prefelt, broadly following the colours of the rainbow.

I cut circular shapes out of it and laid them along the scarf, still following the rainbow sequence. I laid orange merino round the edges and set about felting it.

When it was finished, I wasn’t very pleased with it. The silk was unstructured and flimsy and it seemed to hang wrongly. I don’t think that type of raw silk works well as a base for felting, certainly not on its own. I didn’t take a photo of it.

I left it for a while and came back to it about a year later. I thought maybe felting a solid wool layer on the reverse might improve the hang and structure. I felted 2 layers of white merino onto the back. Now it was firmer but a bit too stiff and still didn’t hang well, but in a different way. I just wasn’t happy with it.

That’s the point at which I gave up on it and popped it into a drawer. Since then it’s been shunted around but I’ve never decided what to do with it…..until now.

On to the card making. I decided simple triangular tree shapes might be nice for festive cards so I made myself a little tree template and set about the scarf with my rotary cutter.

Cutting up the scarf to make triangle tree shapes

For the first few cards I refelted all the cut edges of each triangle. This was nice, but took quite a long time both to do and to dry, so I decided to go with raw edges: it didn’t make a lot of difference to the appearance and it certainly speeded up the making. I cut out some different card and paper backgrounds, glued them onto cards, stuck the trees to the backgrounds and drew a stem and decorative dot on top of each tree. Mostly I used acrylic pens but where I didn’t have a suitable colour I used other permanent markers. Here’s the first batch.

Some of the triangles were a little plain and, as I had my acrylic pens out, I decided to do a bit of doodling. I admit, I was rather enjoying myself by this stage. Perhaps I got a bit carried away (some of the trees started to look like pizza slices)!

I grouped the trees into threes, choosing ones that had three different colours on them wherever possible. I found some bright pre-cut papers and chose the nearest colours to the trees in each group. Then I swapped them around so that each tree was on a background that matched one of the others in its group. I finished off by swapping the colours again for the dots and stems.

Here’s a close up. The trees have green, purple and turquoise on them. I picked out the matching papers, put the lime green tree on the purple paper, the turquoise tree on the green paper and purple tree on the turquoise paper. Then I finished off with the dot and stem in the third colour that wasn’t on the tree or background paper.

It’s hard to describe just how much I was enjoying myself, though some of that may be because I was almost certainly supposed to be doing something boring like cleaning or tidying up.

I did sell some of the cards and sent a few too. They’re not the best cards I’ve ever made but I did enjoy making them and was happy to have repurposed a scarf that didn’t really work. I still have plenty of felt scarf left so I may do something else with it in the future.

A little later, I made some other cards that I liked better and that sold really well.

In my charity shop moochings I recently found a really beautiful, large hand-marbled silk scarf. It was way more expensive than anything I normally buy. I’m normally in the £2 – £4 range for a silk scarf and this was £8.50. However, it really was big and interesting and I was intrigued as to how well it would felt. So, I splashed the cash. The marbled dyes sit on the surface of the fabric so I wondered how well the wool fibres would penetrate the silk. Age and experience do have their advantages: this time I made a small sample to make sure it felted well, which it did.

I cut out a long rectangle of merino and silk prefelt and laid a section of the scarf full length along it, flush with the edge of one long side and covering half of the width. Sorry, I forgot to take a photo so I here’s a quick sketch, literally on the back of an envelope.

Once it was felted and dry, I cut it into thin strips ready for printing. I’d found a royalty-free image of a plain green fir tree and, using photoshop elements, dotted it with robins to look like baubles. I printed the images on heat transfer paper, then, using my heat press, printed a tree on some of the strips. I stuck the strips to long cards and this was the result. Not as much fun to make as the other cards but I do like the result better.

8 ‘Robins’ cards above and a close up of one of them, below

On the remaining strips, I printed an image of a friend’s cat, to which I’d added (in photoshop) a Santa hat. I had six felt strips for the cat but one didn’t print properly which left me with five. I thought I’d better save one to send to the cat owner and was going to offer the other four for sale but my cat-owning friend decided he’d like to send the cards, so bought all four. There are lots of cat and dog lovers around so maybe I’ll make some of those next year. What do you think?

Four ‘Layla’ cards above and a close up below

While I was on a roll, I repeated the process using an animal print scarf and a blue patterned scarf to make some cards that are not season-specific. People do seem to like this type of design and quite a few say they or the recipients will cut them out to make a bookmark or just put the card in a frame. The horse chestnut is from a painting my Mum did, the honesty was composed from some photos I’d taken, the ferns were from a royalty-free image I found online and the birds are all from photos of my previous large felt pictures.

I know I’ve said it more than once before but I do love a bit of fabric re-purposing, whether second-hand or from a failed project.

Fun with Sauna Hats

November 9, 2024 Lindsay Wilkinson Artwork Comments 23 comments

About 18 months ago (my, doesn’t time fly?) my friend Duncan, who had recently built a sauna in his garden, asked if I could advise him on making felt sauna hats for him and his wife. This was the first time I’d heard of such a thing (I’m not a big sauna fan) so I asked him to tell me about them and I did a bit of research to understand what was required.

Duncan had already bought some Jacob wool prefelt for the hats. He was going to try following some online wet felting videos but he couldn’t find precisely what he needed and was starting to realise it might be a bit tricky so he asked me to help.

The prefelt was the first challenge. I don’t make garments, partly because I can’t wear wool at all, and partly because I suppose I’m just more interested in other things like pictures, sculptures and homewares. So, I’d never made a hat, but if I did, I would use wool tops/rovings or batts, not prefelt. One of the challenges of creating a 3-dimensional item using a resist is getting a good smooth and even finish. If you don’t wrap the wool tightly around the resist edges, and spend a long time working those edges, coaxing the wool to fit snugly around the resist and firming the edges thoroughly in the early stages, you end up with a visible ridge of thicker felt where the resist edges were. Basically, some wool gets pushed off the edges of the resist and the two sides of your piece felt together along that line, creating a ridge. With prefelt you are adding joining together pieces of ‘fabric’ into the mix, which makes getting a smooth and even finish even more of a challenge.

In my studio I made a small sample – to see how I’d go about joining the prefelt. I didn’t have any of Duncan’s prefelt so I used some white commercially produced prefelt that was to hand. I think it was 80% merino wool and 20% silk.

I drew a rather random bell-shape for the resist. Then I cut one half of the prefelt larger than the resist and the second half smaller. I thought this would give me the best join without it being too thick.

I cut slits into the larger half to help it fit over the resist’s curved lines

I then worked it in the normal way, paying special attention to those tricky edges. Here’s the finished item, and a shot each of the ‘hat’ with my hand and with the resist for scale.

I was pretty pleased: even felt, nice smooth finish with no ridges. A sauna hat any smallish mammal might be proud to wear.

And then, well, life sort of got in the way and we never quite got round to making the hats. Recently, Duncan and I got talking sauna hat making again and I was appalled that 18 months had gone by. Happily we found a mutually convenient day last week and set about our delayed hat project.

The 18 months delay turned out to have added a couple of additional issues. Firstly, moths had got to Duncan’s Jacob prefelt and there were quite a few holes in it. Secondly, I’d forgotten a couple of the things I’d decided/done when making the practice piece.

As I hadn’t used the Jacob prefelt before, I suggested we make a 20cm square sample to give Duncan a very quick first lesson in wet felting and to check the shrinkage.

We measured Duncan’s head, made some decisions about how he broadly wanted the hat to fit and I made some calculations. We’d got 35% shrinkage in the sample but I could see it would have been possible to get more and I wanted a good firm felt. It was also clear that this hat is supposed to fit quite loosely so I rounded the measurements up a bit.

I drew the resist and rechecked my calculations. It really did look huge.

Undeterred we set about cutting out the prefelt with one half larger and the other half smaller than the resist. We also partially felted a scrap of the prefelt to make a hanging hoop – leaving the ends unworked so they would attach to the hat

We wetted the ends of the larger half and folded them over the resist but then I decided it was probably better to wrap the tabbed ends over the other half of the prefelt rather than the resist.

I’m not sure it made a lot of difference which side was laid out first but I did miss out one important step that I taken with the sample. With the sample I had torn and fluffed out the edges of the prefelt where they joined to give a smoother join. I forgot about that and although the final hat was fine, it did have a thicker section at the join that I could have minimized with tearing rather than cutting the edges of the prefelt. If I made another, I’d rethink that bit.

Duncan chose minimal surface decoration so added a spray of assorted autumn-coloured locks to one side. And here are both sides as the work gets underway. You can see the loop has been added to the top (a bit off-centre!) and yes, that white spot on the plain side is a moth hole that we missed when first patching bits in.

When we got to the rolling stage, it still looked huge.

We laughed. A LOT. I was a little worried I’d got the measurements / calculations wrong. But only a little. This was mainly experimentation. If I’d been teaching I’d have made at least one full scale hat and with the right prefelt beforehand. Honest!

Here’s Duncan happily rolling away. I usually use a pool noodle to roll the work around but I’d forgotten to take one and just bubble wrap seemed to work OK.

Duncan kept trying it on and we kept laughing. Happily though, it was getting smaller.

You can see the progress we were making against the resist.

When it was time for me to go home this was as far as we’d got. The sauna hat needed a little more work to finish it off: some final fulling and shaping but I think it was looking pretty good. And Duncan was delighted with it, which is the main thing. We’d worked about 6 hours in total minus a brief (but delicious) lunch break but that included making the shrinkage sample and some faffing around making decisions and dealing with moth holes. I made sure Duncan knew how to finish it off and left him to it.

I was amazed the next morning to see that the previous evening he’d actually set about the second hat and had made excellent progress.

Duncan worked a couple more hours on the hats and here’s the happy couple modelling their sauna hats. They’ve already been used and apparently work really well keeping your head cool so you can stay a little longer in the sauna.

I asked Duncan how he’d found it. Firstly, he said it was a really fun day. Knowing nothing about it previously, he’d found it an interesting and mindful activity. He was also surprised at how very long it takes. I think that’s true of everyone who first tries wet-felting.

I really enjoyed it too. I realised that I’d never previously jointly felted anything with another person. If I’m teaching it’s more demonstration, coaching and checking on my part, with the students doing the work. As this was quite a big undertaking, I demonstrated on the hat, Duncan did most of the grafting but I did join in sometimes either to give him a break, to see how things were going or just to share the load. It was certainly big enough in the rubbing phase for us both to work on it at the same time.

It was also a reminder, though, not to let 18 months to lapse between making a sample and making the final piece and not to make something for the first time with too little preparation, unless it’s with a friend and for fun.

I don’t think my future lies in hat-making but I did enjoy trying it out. Have you tried something new recently? We’d love to hear about it.

The Mother of Invention

September 5, 2024 Lindsay Wilkinson Artwork Comments 18 comments

There’s a proverb I like: “necessity is the mother of invention”. Apparently it started with Plato. I’m going to test it today in two ways. Firstly, I’ve had a lot of sales and exhibitions recently and I haven’t made much new work. I’m writing this while stewarding an exhibition. So, as my blog is due and I’ve nothing new to show you (necessity), I’m drawing on some work I did earlier in the year and reflecting on that (invention). Secondly, it was actually the need to create a lot of pictures quickly (necessity) that led me down the different style of pictures (invention) that I’m going to talk about.

As I’ve covered in previous blogs, I had a large exhibition to fill in April/May this year so had a big push from January to March to make lots of new pictures. As all wet felters will know, wet felting is not a quick process and there’s no mileage in trying to hurry it. So, as well as making my usual style of pictures, I had a think about the quickest felt pictures I could make while not skimping on the quality of the felting. Quicker pictures would also allow me to offer them at a slightly lower price than my other work.

Nuno felting (which is including fabric in felt) with patterned fabric is a quick way of creating colour and pattern as it bypasses complicated and time-consuming wool layout. And now that I can print onto felt (again covered in a previous blog) that’s a comparatively quick way of introducing images.

This was my first picture.

Square wet felted picture with patterned grey fabric on the lower half, two blown trees towards the top left on a white background with wisps of grey cloud in the white sky — “Monochrome Tree #1”

The fabric was a lovely fine wool scarf that I had bought (as always) in a charity shop. I have the solid beech frames made for me in batches in advance so I knew what size I was aiming for. I used a commercial prefelt of merino wool and silk – again trying to minimise the layout time and it’s also lovely to work with. There are plenty of legitimate, free-to-use images on the internet. Sourcing, scaling, printing and transferring them to felt is quite time consuming, especially as I only planned on using each tree once for this first set of pictures, but I’m sure I will come back to them.

Two square wet felted pictures similar to the previous one but without the clouds and with a dark line at the top of the fabric — Monochrome Tree #2

For the next (and subsequent) ones I decided to make them slightly smaller than the frames, leaving a small border around the felt. I added a line of recycled tapestry wool at the top of the fabric, just because I liked the look of it, and decided against patterning the sky.

I then fished out some black and white silk scarves from my charity shop finds and used those instead of the wool scarf.

Square wet felted picture similar to the previous ones but with a crow shape in the top left hand side of the tree. Swirly grey and white fabric — Monochrome Tree #4 with crow

square wet felted picture similar to the previous ones but with patchy lined fabric — Monochrome Tree #4 with crow

I added a crow silhouette in the tree on the left picture. A bit fiddly but I liked it.

Square wet felted picture similar to the previous ones, using the same fabric as #4 but with two trees instead of one — Monochrome Tree #6 Two Trees

Square wet felted picture similar to the previous ones but with a flowery patterned black and white fabric — Monochrome Tree #6 Two Trees

My next experiment was to switch from black and white to coloured silk, tapestry wool and trees.

Square wet felted picture similar to the previous ones but with yellow and green patterned fabric and a green tree. — Green Tree #1

square wet felted picture similar to the previous picture but with a different shape of tree — Green Tree #1

When I was printing on Green Tree #1 I accidentally pressed a fold in the corner. It came out with a hot iron but I didn’t remember to photograph it again afterwards.

After I’d made these two, it occurred to me that I could double the width of the wool and fabric to make two pictures at the same time, cutting them apart before printing on the trees. Why hadn’t I thought of that sooner? Super-speedy.

Continuing with the limited colour palate, I chose a silk scarf that was red / orange with some colour fade across the scarf.

rectangular wet felted fabric with orange / red silk felted in, covering just over the bottom half of the fabric. There's a variegated line of red/orange wool yarn felted across the join between the silk and the white wool background. — After felting and before printing

When the felting was finished I wasn’t sure I liked how much the white fibres showed through the red / orange silk. The previous fabrics had either been partly white or were light coloured so the movement of the white wool and silk fibres through the fabric had been less visible.

As I contemplated this, I decided that I liked the long rectangular shape for a change. I happened to have some frames that were more or less the same shape and proportions….and so “Red Trees” became a double-width landscape with two trees.

Rectangular wet felted picture as in the previous image but with two orange/red trees printed in the top left of the felt with the bottom of each trunk touching the yarn line as if growing from there — “Red Trees”

That wasn’t where I thought I was heading but it’s fun to take an unexpected turn,

I have now sold more than half of these pictures, and I’d say they’ve sold slightly better than other work. I’m a little ambivalent about this. I like the new pictures but I don’t feel as much for them as my usual bird, beach and/or water pictures. I suppose that shouldn’t matter. They have definitely attracted a slightly different audience. When I get back into the studio I will be making some more. Not because of their speed as I’m not now under the same pressure, but because people seem to like them and I’ve enjoyed trying something new. I think I will stick to the monochrome fabrics but try out some different colours. Having a group of different strong colours like the red and green might make a good display.

And so, it seems, on this occasion, that necessity was indeed the mother of invention. I made a new line of work and I have a blog to post!

Travel Inspiration (& a little bit of felting)

July 8, 2024 Lindsay Wilkinson Artwork Comments 14 comments

For various reasons, I’ve not done much felt-making recently and I’m now in the very fortunate position of finding myself on holiday / vacation in California when this post is due. So, I’m going to talk about some of the creatively-inspiring things I’ve seen while I’ve been here, and then show you a little felting I’ve done as a result.

As I’ve been on holiday I’ve been looking at and mulling over some of the things around me that I find inspiring when I’m deciding what to felt. Visiting California, these have fallen broadly into three categories: coastal, botanical & textile.

COASTAL

For the first week, I was staying in Redono Beach, just south of Los Angeles, so there was an obvious coastal connection. As I walked along the beach each morning I looked at the ocean and things that were washed up at the water’s edge.

I found two “sand dollars” (actually skeletons of flat, burrowing sea urchins) which were beautifully patterned so popped them in my pocket for further consideration.

Left & bottom the 2 sand dollars I found

There was lots of interesting sea weed – I quite fancy wet felting some sea weed – though you’ll be glad to hear I didn’t pocket that.

Branched seaweed on a sandy beach — Seaweed that looks like a small tree with roots

A big pile of ribbon-like seaweed — A pile of seaweed

And I found the usual bits of shell, pebble & sea creatures. Plus a nice view of a little egret

An empty piece of shellfish shell on a sandy beach — A piece of a shellfish or crab

A little egret at Redondo beach

BOTANICALS

Around LA there were some lovely plants & trees. I found the bark of some trees and stems of cacti or succulents in Huntington Botanical Gardens especially intriguing.

These could inspire some really interesting 3D felt pieces.

I also loved these bougainvillea at the Getty Center. Metal rods support or encourage the plant to grow up inside their structure, then the stems, with their bright pink bracts & tiny white flowers, cascade out of the top looking like giant bunches of flowers. I think there’s a felted vase idea in there somewhere.

I gathered these in the garden of the next house we rented in the country near Solvang. I’ve wet felted seed pods, including eucalyptus, before. It was interesting to see the remains of the flowers on the tree on little green pods, then (I assume) the dried version, followed by the matured pods.

Flowers & seed pods, eucalyptus

Maybe I’ll do some more eucalyptus pods some time.

TEXTILES

Also at the Getty Centre was this bust of a Sudanese man by Charles Cordier. This is a bit of a cheat in that it’s a representation of textiles but I marvelled at the way the artist had managed to make the hard marble-onyx look so much like softly draping fabric.

At The Broad modern art museum I found this enormous draped piece, “Red Block”, both extremely beautiful and very poignant. Created by Ghanaian-born, Nigeria-based artist El Anatsui, you can read the gallery’s text (below). Made primarily from reused gin bottle caps it is lovely in itself. As the text describes it, it also references traditional kente cloth, cultural appropriation and the damage caused by alcohol, colonialism & global markets, among other things. I also liked that the decision on exactly how to hang it is up to the exhibition’s curators. Presumably it would be different in every place it’s shown, reflecting the curators’ interpretation.

The Broad also had two textile pieces I found interesting. A large fibre-based work by Channing Hansen…..

Photos

….and a huge felt piece by Robert Morris

On to the Museum of Contemporary Art, I found this work, “African-American Flag” thought-provoking.

African American Flag, 1990 by David Hammons

As was this huge wool tapestry by Goshka Macuga.

Goshka Macuga
Death of Marxism, Women of All Lands Unite, 2013

Visitors to The Broad were encouraged to stand quite close to these giant canvases by Rothko, which positively vibrated with colour.

I thought these could provide a good stepping-off point for wet felting, given how layered the colours are. Though it would take a lot of wool, space and elbow grease to achieve anything like the experience of standing in front of the Rothkos.

I had hoped to find some unspun wool while I was out and about and maybe get in a little recreational felt-making but it wasn’t easy to find. Lots of yarn but no unspun wool. Then, visiting La Purisima Mission in Lompoc, I found some small samples of Navajo Churro wool available in their gift shop, taken from their own flock. There wasn’t much of it & the colours were limited (3 shades of grey) but I bought a little, thinking back to those grey sand dollars.

I gathered together some very basic equipment and cut out a sand dollar shape from scrap bubble wrap to act as a resist.

I’m always happy to remember that you really don’t need any fancy equipment to make wet felt. Just these bits & pieces, some dish soap, warm water & my beach towel.

A reused drinks bottle with holes in the lid, a pit holder, a plastic garbage bag and a piece of bubble wrap — Felting tools

Here’s the wool laid out and wetted down ready for felting.

And here is the result.

The wool is fairly course and felted well though the floor looked like I owned a very shaggy dog afterwards. There was quite a lot of shedding. The patterns aren’t as distinct as I’d have liked because I couldn’t get quite enough colour differentiation but that’s OK. I might do a little needle felting on it when I get home, or I might just leave it as it is.

I hope you enjoy my trip around California. I certainly am!

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Author: Lindsay Wilkinson Artwork

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Playing with prefelt

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Quicker and Cheaper?

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Edge Exhibition

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Auditioning Fabrics

March 9, 2025 Lindsay Wilkinson Artwork Comments 16 comments

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Repurposing and Card Making

January 8, 2025 Lindsay Wilkinson Artwork Comments 20 comments

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Fun with Sauna Hats

November 9, 2024 Lindsay Wilkinson Artwork Comments 23 comments

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The Mother of Invention

September 5, 2024 Lindsay Wilkinson Artwork Comments 18 comments

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Travel Inspiration (& a little bit of felting)

July 8, 2024 Lindsay Wilkinson Artwork Comments 14 comments

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