Felting and Fiber Studio

There are lots of pretty things you can buy for the kitchen to use at Christmas, but where do you store them for the rest of the year?

So I decided to decorate my felted tea cosy for Christmas in a way that would be temporary, so that as soon as Christmas is over I can remove the embellishments.

I made my felted tea-cosy in 2008 and it’s still in daily use but only one side ever gets seen whether it’s on the tea-pot or hanging on the kitchen wall…

…so I decorated the reverse side and that’s the side that will show during the festive season.

After much pencil-end chewing I drew a rough design then, because I find proper drawing difficult, I searched the internet for a free-to-use outline of a deer.

It’s extremely difficult to draw a complicated shape directly onto felt, and freehand cutting a deer out is beyond me.  Luckily there is an easy way using freezer paper.

I reversed the outline then traced it onto the paper side of a piece of freezer paper, then placed it, waxy side down onto a small, thin piece of white fulled felt.  I ironed the freezer paper onto the felt (1-2 minutes with a medium dry iron) then let it cool for half an hour.

I won’t lie to you – cutting the white felt to the outline of the deer was very fiddly and I nearly lost some of the antler.  Next time I’ll choose something simpler!  Holding my breath, I carefully removed the freezer paper.

I put a felting mat inside the tea cosy then I used a felting needle to ‘tack’ the white deer in place.  I should mention that my tea cosy is a chunky thing – it’s thick and therefore easy to work on.  I didn’t go too near the edges of the silhouette for fear of splitting the white felt – even so the antler still went a bit wonky – so although tacking the deer shape in place would be ok for art work it wouldn’t survive long on a working tea cosy!

The snowflakes are just wisps of white merino wool fibres loosely needle felted in.

The snowy ‘ground’ is fancy yarn. I used white thread to hold it in place – a small stitch every inch.

I liked all the blue and white but a small colour accent was needed so I cut a piece of Christmas ribbon to make a collar and attached it to the white felt with fabric glue.

When I’d finished I could see that I just had to make a new hanging hook the same colour as the tea cosy, so I knitted an i-cord from some sparkly crochet cotton.

All the embellishments are easily removable after Christmas.  The deer can be peeled off, the snowflakes popped out, the yarn unstitched and the forgiving felt will smooth itself out with a bit of gentle rubbing.

But I’ll keep the sparkly hanging hook – it looks good with the other side of the tea cosy!

The challenge for this quarter is “surface decoration by twists, tubes, yarns” and I chose to use only yarns as surface decoration.

This is my inspiration photo, taken by my daughter Annie, on a local beach.  I used it to inspire my felted piece for the challenge.

The first thing I see in the photo are the ropes, thick and thin, in white, orange and turquoise and there’s a lot of frayed ends.  Then at the top there’s a metal ring that may have had chain attached to it at some time, and in the middle is some tangled fibre.

I decided to make the yarn embellishments first, starting with the ropes.

I used 100% wool 4-ply yarn to make the ropes (there’s a good tutorial by ‘Textile Arts Now’ that shows how to make a twisted cord).  The thickness of the cord will depend on how many strands of yarn used to make it.

Note: Some 100% wool is labelled ‘Superwash’ and it won’t felt.

To distress the ends of the ropes, untwist the yarn strands.  It can be tricky – I lost a bit during the separation of the strand below – it looks like 3-ply now!

I used 100% wool yarn to make a chain by tying knots at regular intervals in a double length of yarn.

A piece of this fancy yarn, after distressing, made the fibre mess I needed.

I wanted to add a little something that wasn’t in the inspiration photo but I still wanted it to be made from yarn.

After a quick trip to Googleland I found a lovely free knitting pattern, by ‘knittingninja’, free starfish pattern, so I made one from pink mohair.  A piece of knitting can be fairly ‘solid’ so I thought the fluffy mohair would help the starfish to felt in easily and I made the stitches a bit looser than I normally would.

So I then had all the components I needed – all made from yarn.

I made a base of loose yellow merino wool fibres to compose my challenge piece on.  When I’d finished I took a quick snap on my phone to check the composition – it’s much easier to see the whole thing on a screen.

I started the felting agitation very carefully so as not to disturb the design, then turned it over and worked mainly from the back – checking the front at regular intervals.

When the yarns were loosely attached I rolled the felt until the piece felt firm.  When it was dry I trimmed the edges with a rotary cutter – the finished size is 32 x 26cm (13″ x 10″).

As you can see from the close-up below, the texture is pronounced but none of the yarn embellishment moves under finger pressure!  It’s all felted in there “good ‘n’ proper”.

Small abstract seascapes are quick and easy to make.  Just lay down some coloured horizontal lines and ‘hey presto’ the eye is tricked!

Make 3 base layers of wool fibres – start with a vertical layer so that the 3rd layer is vertical.  Wet down the wool fibres then mark a horizon with a piece of thread.

The layout shown below was approximately 30 x 20cm (12″x 8″) and only Merino wool fibres were used.

You can just lay down horizontal, dry, coloured strips of wool fibres, but I prefer to wet the strips as I think the results are better.

The sample below shows 10 strips of merino wool fibres on a base layer of white (each colour was the same amount of fibres).  The top 5 strips were pre-wetted and the bottom 5 strips were dry, and when placed on the base layer they looked identical.  However, during felting the dry fibres have spread and the colour is not so intense.  The pre-wetted fibres don’t spread so much and the colours stay vibrant.

To wet a strip of fibres, simply hold each end and saturate it in a bowl of soapy water.  Then lift it out and run finger and thumb gently down the length.

To make the sky, start at the top with the darker colours then work downwards to the lighter ones.  Go back over it putting in colours wherever you think they need to be!

To make the sea, start with the darker colours on the horizon (remember to remove the guide thread) and mirror some of the sky colours in the water then add a bit of headland.

Add a focal point.  Perhaps a lighthouse or buildings or boats.

The focus for this seascape is a windfarm and the windmills were formed from very thin wisps of white merino wool fibres.

During the early felting the straggly bits on both sides of the piece of felt were trimmed and it became painfully obvious that the windmills looked more like drunken dancers, so they were removed!

When the felt was dry the windmills were added using white cotton perle embroidery thread – each windmill comprised a french knot and 4 long stitches.

I have a stash of frames bought from charity (thrift) shops and I had just the right one for ‘The Windfarm’.

This is a very quick and easy way to make a seascape and it will never be the same twice!