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Author: Marilyn aka Pandagirl

Felting Soap with Guest Artist Leonor Calaca

Felting Soap with Guest Artist Leonor Calaca

Comments 23 comments

Our guest artist today is Leonor Calaca from Felt Buddies shares her method for making felted soaps.  You can see more of her work at http://www.FeltBuddies.co.uk

Hello! Today I’ll teach you how to make your very own felted soap.

Before we start however, I’m sure a few of you are wondering, “What on earth is a felted soap?” Good question! Allow me to explain.

A felted soap is, as the name might reveal, a bar of soap that’s surrounded by felted wool. This means you’re basically getting a bar of soap and a washcloth in one product, making the former last longer, while using the latter as an exfoliating agent.

The wool around the soap also makes the soap last longer, and when the inside is all used up you can use the wool as compost material, or keep it as a decorative pebble.

Christmas is fast approaching, and this would make a great gift – it smells nice and it’s useful, what’s not to love? I actually sold out last holiday season!

Let’s get started, shall we?

1

First, you’ll need the following ingredients: warm soapy water in a clean container, a nice bar of soap with round corners (sharp corners may break through the wool), enough wool to cover the soap with, and some bubble wrap for friction.

A couple of good extra items are a felting needle (I’ll explain why in a moment), and a pair of kitchen gloves.

2

Begin by carefully wrapping the fibre around the soap. I used a lovely wool top with silk tweed here, but you can use roving or a batt – just make sure you’re using enough to cover the soap, but not so much so that it makes lathering hard!

You’ll need to wrap the fibre in two opposite directions. I like to start by wrapping it horizontally and then vertically because I think the end result looks nicer, but you can do it whichever way you prefer – just as long as you have two opposite layers.

3

Remember the felting needle I mentioned before? Here is where it can comes in handy: I like to needle felt the ends to make sure nothing comes apart when I’m wet felting. This isn’t absolutely necessary, but I find it keeps things neat.

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Once your soap is all wrapped up, it’s time to dunk it in warm water.  I highly recommend you go slowly at this stage, as the fibre might fall off the soap or migrate if you haven’t secured it with a felting needle. Squeeze all the air bubbles out carefully in the water and, once you take the soap out of the water, gently squeeze out all the excess liquid and start rubbing the top layer lightly so the fibres start clinging to each other.

5

Once the fibre is secured, it’s time to help it shrink around the soap. I had a bubble wrap pouch from a mailing bag that I used to help create friction, but regular bubble wrap will work just fine.

Rub the bubble wrap against the soap, checking regularly if your fibre isn’t migrating, you don’t want to end up with bare patches (you can needle felt some extra fibre on those at this stage, and continue wet felting).

6

Once the fibres start contracting around the soap, you can use your bare hands to continue the felting process.  I like to create friction on the ridges of my sink; I sometimes also wear kitchen gloves because the rubber also helps, and I like to alternate hot and cold tap water so the fibre shrinks around the soap faster.

7

Once the fibre feels compact around the soap, you’re done!

Carefully rise out the lather under the tap, gently squeeze the soap and let it dry; after that, you can add some kraft paper around the soap to make a “belt,” or you can just place it inside an organza bag.

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Don’t be surprised if, after gifting this to friends, they come back for more! You can always direct them to this tutorial so they can make their own…

Feel free to ask me questions about this in the comments section. Happy felting!

Thanks Leonor for sharing your method of felting soap.  I have a feeling a lot of people will be getting soap for the holidays.

 

Guest Artist Terri Simon on Dimensional Felt

Guest Artist Terri Simon on Dimensional Felt

Comments 19 comments

Our Guest Artist today is Terri Simon aka Meterrilee on the forum.

Hello fellow fiber enthusiasts!    I’m originally from Detroit, Michigan but moved to Oregon in 2014. I have been felting for about six years, both needle felting and vessels, but my real love is painting with felt and exploring different textures.

Marilyn and I both recently participated in an online class from Opulent Fibers — Kristy Kun’s Texture Techniques with Needled Wool.  Marilyn asked me to  show my work and I am happy to do this.  In addition to telling you a bit about this class, which was excellent, I would like to generate a little discussion about inspiration and the artist equivalent of plagiarism.  First the class…

Kristy’s class centered on three sample projects; each project building on the techniques learned in the prior project.  The class fee included all materials for the class, instructions and videos demonstrating certain techniques.  Kristy set up chatrooms that allowed students to ask questions, post pictures of progress, comment on each other’s creations and get expert guidance, suggestions and commentary from Kristy.  You can check out the classes Kristy offers at her website, Opulent Fibers, here:  http://www.opulentfibers.com

Here is a link to her newest class:

http://www.opulentfibers.com/heavily-textured-felting-techniques-home-online-workshop/#.V9qWJa268e1

Kristy creates the most gorgeous 3D wall hangings (among other beautiful things) and I was so excited to learn how she fabricates them in this online class.  To see some of Kristy’s work, look here (just wonderful!): http://www.kristykun.com/gallery/   Now you understand why I wanted to learn this technique!

Below are the three sample projects I created in this class.  It’s a very interesting technique to attach pieces of heavy weight prefelt fabric to each other.  There is a lot of labor involved to ensure everything is tightly attached and felted to a very hard finish.   But well worth it! Our samples were a 12” square and each one took several hours to prepare before even before using water.  Many students were active in posting pictures of their creations and providing encouragement and feedback to others.  Overall, a very enjoyable and educational experience.

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Project one: learning to attach the prefelt vertically to a square of prefelt.  It’s a weird looking, but the purpose was to learn the technique.  J

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Project two: learning to attach prefelt vertically and to each other onto a square prefelt.  This was definitely much trickier.

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Project three: The flower.  This was the reason I took the class!  If you looked at Kristy’s gallery, you can see all the many possibilities for this technique.

Which leads me to the issue for which I hope to generate some discussion: artistic plagiarism.

I follow a few fiber artists’ blogs and have great admiration for many fiber artists; the moderators of this forum included.  To mention a few others that I greatly admire: Moy Mackay, Nicola Brown, Kim Winters, Lyn and Annie at RosiePink, Fiona Duthie, Sara Renzulli, and Andrea Noesk-Porada.  I love to look at the works by these artists and I’m so inspired by them.  I want to make everything they make!  There is a fine line here, however, and I’m mindful of trying not to cross it.  When I make something that is very similar (with felt, it is never EXACTLY identical), I certainly would give credit to the original artist if I were to do anything with that piece.

I’ve never sold anything yet—I give nearly everything I make away.  But, I hope to sell pieces soon.  Anything I intend to sell is going to be, hopefully, solely my creation, (not ones I’ve attempted to copy to learn a technique or just because I loved the item and wanted to duplicate it).

How do you address this?  I can needle felt a chipmunk or make a felt painting of a highland cow in the manner of Sara Renzulli and Moy Mackay, respectively.  They aren’t going to be identical to something either one of these artists produced, but I was inspired by them in the creation of my item.

Now that I know how to make lovely 3D wall hangings, taught by Kristy Kun, I intend to make larger pieces; similar of course due to material and technique, but they won’t be identical to Kristy’s work.  In fact, I will work hard to make sure they DON’T look like her work…but the idea was hers.

Do you mention the artist who inspired the work, when relevant, on items you sell?  Do you feel that since no piece is identical in size, shape, color, and texture, that items you sell are your creation and there is no need for mentioning the artist who inspired you?  This is a really important issue for me.  I would love to hear your thoughts on this subject.

Thanks!

Thank you Terri for sharing your class work and invoking this discussion.

Natural Dyeing with Cutch, Rhubarb and Indigo

Natural Dyeing with Cutch, Rhubarb and Indigo

Comments 16 comments

This summer I’ve been playing with a lot of natural dyes with the help of Cathy (Luvswool).  This is the third in my series of natural dyeing experiments.

As with the other dyeing sessions all the silk and wool rovings were mordanted with alum potassium sulfate.  I used the same silk habotai, silk gauze, silk organza, merino and corriedale roving and wool yarn as I did in my previous experiments.

I started with cutch which was in powder form.

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The colors for silk and wool were pretty much the same gold peach except for the the organza which seemed to soak up all the color.

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I decided that I wouldn’t use a modifier with the Cutch because I had enough browns and goldens.

So, I moved on to rhubarb liquid extract.

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The resulting colors were also in the peach/gold family.

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A couple of years ago Cathy and I had an indigo dyeing day.  I had a piece of dark crimped silk left over and decided to use this as a modifier for the second rhubarb batch.

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I thought perhaps I’d get a muted green, but here’s what I did get:

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There is a hint of green, but it’s not obvious in these pics. the silk gauze and habotai closest to a light turquoise.  The organza is dusky turquoise blue.  The wool is more of a baby blue.

Here is the indigo silk piece after being used as a modifier.  Still a nice indigo color.

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Have you done any natural dyeing this season?

Easing into the Third Quarter Challenge

Easing into the Third Quarter Challenge

Comments 16 comments

I’m working on some projects for the Third Quarter Challenge, but had completed this project earlier which also falls into the Second Quarter Challenge.

While going through some old craft boxes, I found a piece of crochet I did many, many moons ago as a young woman.  I set it aside with my felting supplies.  Every once in a while I’d pick it up and set it on some roving or prefelt, unsure what I wanted to do with it.

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It was definitely acrylic, so I used a small tail on a prefelt when I was making samples and it felt in very nicely.  However, because it has such great dimension I didn’t want to lose that either.  Finally, I made some gray batts with merino and corriedale and decided that’s what I’d do and use a resist under the center so I wouldn’t lose that nice dimension.

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I purposely left the center open so that would be firmly attached.

Here is the result:

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I don’t know why this one looks orange.  Lighting I guess.  But you can see where some of the gray migrated up through crochet piece.20160609_123520_001

My next dilemna was what to do with it.  I tried it over a small pillow, but didn’t like the way it pushed the design up.  Then I tried a couple of pre-made square frames.  But I didn’t like them either.  The frames were either too wide, the wrong color or not big enough.

There was something lacking.  I just couldn’t put my finger on it.  Then I tried stitching a design around it.  That gave it a little balance, but I’m still not sure.

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I may take it to a professional framer and have something like this done.  I tried a new program — Ribbet to super impose a frame.  I know the top and bottom are  cut off a little but it was just to see if I liked it.

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Or this?

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What do you think?

At least now I have a piece of my crafting history preserved and not stuck away in a box.

Felting in Florida

Felting in Florida

Comments 16 comments

My husband I recently went to Florida to visit our son and his family.  I usually try to bring some wool for my grandsons to play with.  We also babysat while our son and daughter-in-law took a weekend away for their anniversary.  It’s always good to keep the boys occupied indoors since it was unbearably hot and humid outside.

This time I thought it would be fun to do pictures.  So, I had them each draw a picture.

Here they are busy creating.  Luke, the six year old, drew dinosaurs.  Josh, the four year old, is into a game or video called Stickman, so Stickmen it was along with an emoji.

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I had brought some white prefelt for the background and colored prefelts for cutouts and a variety of colored roving for them to chose from.

Luke was able to cut most of the big shapes himself, but I helped on the smaller details.  As we worked, we discussed the best way to add each part of the picture. He had very definite ideas.  Since he had done felting before, he was able to do most of the rubbing and rolling himself.

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Josh also had very definite ideas on colors and shapes.  In his picture, we used mostly roving.  The eyes were too hard for him, so I did that.  He’s a very good supervisor giving detailed instructions on what colors and were to put everything.  He started the felting process, then lost interest. So, Grandma had to finish. By the way, those are bananas on the tree.  Evidently, Stickmen like bananas.

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Unfortunately, the vinyl tablecloth I used to protect the wood table began to leach color into the felt even though we used bubble wrap.  So, there are a few pink spots in the corners.  The boys didn’t seem to mind though.

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If they ever get a trampoline, I can see them using Zara’s method to felt a rug.  I know they’d enjoy that!

 

Felting a Rug on a Trampoline

Felting a Rug on a Trampoline

Comments 35 comments

Our guest author/artist is Tuulikki Zara Rooke.

Last winter, I buried a couple of raw fleeces in the snow, and let the snow melt “wash” them. Well, it´s not the most thorough way of washing fleeces, but they were slightly whiter in colour, and smelled a little less sheepy when they thawed out in the spring. I have now used two of these fleeces to make a rug, with the assistance of my kids, on a trampoline.

Carding this amount of wool would take quite some time, so I decided to try just whipping the wool instead. As it was slightly windy, and the wool tends to fly around when you do this, I decided to do it on our trampoline, which has a security net around it. Very practical indeed. Beating the wool with sticks is a rather fun way to separate the fibres and, being on a trampoline, it was impossible to resist jumping around in the wool, too.

Photo 1

Now that we had all this wool on the trampoline, I figured we may as well try felting on the trampoline too. We laid out the wool on an old sheet, added a thin layer of carded wool on top, and finally raw locks in different natural colours. We wet it all down with hot water and soap, rolled it up, and then the girls and I (ok, mostly the girls, but I did join in for a bit) bounced around on the trampoline until we ran out of energy.

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The next day, we added more hot water and soap and did a bit of rubbing and rolling. Then we rolled it out of the sheet and I let the girls bounce on the rug. An interesting and quite effective way to full a piece of this size.

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Apart from being fun, and giving us quite a lot of exercise, there is a practical advantage to felting on a trampoline. All the excess water drains through the woven trampoline, which makes it easy to just keep adding more hot water during the felting process, and to get rid of excess water after rinsing the rug thoroughly with the garden hose.

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A rug made with wool equivalent to about three fleeces can hold a lot of water. It took three days to dry. After that, I could add the final embellishments – swirls of black yarn that I needle-felted on the white centre.

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It´s a thick and sturdy rug, measuring 115 cm (3.7′) across. It will probably stand for a lot of wear too, as it survived the rather harsh treatment on the trampoline.

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Zara, thanks for sharing your family’s adventure with felt on a trampoline this summer.  It sure looked like fun with a beautiful result!

 

Resurrecting Silk Paper Bowl

Resurrecting Silk Paper Bowl

Comments 20 comments

Last month I wrote about doing more experiments with UFOs and my silk paper bowl disaster.  https://feltingandfiberstudio.com/2016/06/20/more-experiments-with-ufos/

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Fortunately, Lyn suggested I try Ruth’s Felt Scrap Bowl method.  https://feltingandfiberstudio.com/2011/12/11/felt-scrap-bowl-tutorial/

I was hesitant at first because it required free motion stitching. Something I haven’t mastered. But I needed the practice, so this was a good opportunity to do just that.

The first thing I did was to tear it apart.

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Then I laid it out in a round shape.

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I could have left it plain, but decided I had some hand dyed yarns that would add some texture and interest and complimented the silk.

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I proceeded to cover it on both sides with the Sulky water soluble stabilizer on top before pinning and stitching.  I know I should have put down the Sulky before designing, but I’m getting good at flipping projects.

Then came the fun part — stitching it.  I had a lot of trouble with the thread breaking, the tension being picky and a lot of stops and starts but I finally got it finished.  Although I didn’t use fancy designs, it’s pretty much straight lines up and down and around.

Following Ruth’s directions, I wet down the package leaving it a little sticky and draping it over a jar then adding folds.

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It looks a little droopy and sad. I let it dry overnight and was surprised in the morning to find a very pretty textured and dimensional vase.

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While it’s not strong enough to hold anything, I could put in a glass or clear plastic to be able to set something inside.  I even toyed with getting a small battery type light and making it a little lamp.  There are plenty of holes and it’s very thin.  It might work.  If I can find such a light, I’ll post pictures on the forum.

Thanks Lyn and Ruth!  I’m pleased with the results and the fact I was able to reuse the silk. Oh, I have some left but not enough for a vase.  I’ll have to find something else to make with it and get more free motion practice.

 

 

 

 

Playing with Natural Dyes Part 2

Playing with Natural Dyes Part 2

Comments 23 comments

I’ve been trying out different natural dyes using similar materials.  This time I tried alkanet roots and logwood with and without iron.

Here are the alkanet roots before preparation which took two days to get ready to use.

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The logwood also had to be prepared ahead of time.

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Again, I used mordanted corriedale and merino roving, mulberry silk, wool yarn, silk habotai and silk gauze as I did in my previous post  https://feltingandfiberstudio.com/2016/06/28/playing-with-natural-dyes-part-1/

According to some of the charts I saw on the colors to expect from the alkanet roots, it could be anything from gray to deep purple.  I had also read it was possible for blues or even red.  As you can see from the pot, there was a light purple tinge to the water. The dye liquor was definitely dark purple but then it was diluted with the water.

aklanet only pot

 

The result was a silver gray.  For all the experiments I leave the pot to cool overnight to get the most color.  This was a lot less than i expected, but its a pretty color.

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The next step was to add iron to the pot with another set of materials.

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The top picture is wet, the bottom is dry.  So, I now have silver and gold colors.

Next was the logwood. From all the pictures I’d seen and roving Cathy had dyed in Arkansas I thought I would get some type of purple.  It looked pale in the pot.

logwood pot

So, I was surprised when it dried and it was more of a taupe color. But surprises are half the fun!  Then I added iron and did another batch.

logwood side by side logwood iron top wo bottom

The darker ones on the bottom are with the iron and its more of a charcoal color.

Again, these are all experiments and results can vary depending on water, temperature, etc.  While I had a little different expectations, I’m not unhappy with the results.  I can always overdye.

What have your experiences with natural dyeing been?

 

 

The Final Projects for the Paper Lamination Class

The Final Projects for the Paper Lamination Class

Comments 10 comments

I wasn’t able to finish the coursework for Ruth’s Paper Lamination Class within the class time, but have since completed the last two assignments.  We had a choice of several different options for the last two weeks.  I chose to use one of the lamination pieces on a pillow.  It was a piece of silk habatoi that I used a stencil with acrylic paint on a piece of copy paper.

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I made a couple of batts  with gray,  a little green and purple accents over a resist. Then wet felted.  Of course, I had to cut a side to get the resist out and the pillow stuffing in.  While it was drying, it was a nice square shape.  Now its a funky shape.  But that’s ok, the colors go perfectly in my bedroom.

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It seemed a little plain so I tried adding prefelt leaves, but I felt they overwhelmed the design.  I was very pleased with the texture and dimension of the flowers and decided not to do any stitching like I had on the bird project.

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So, I decided to  stitch around the silk using a cretan stitch. It was an exercise in patience and practice.  I used a silver sharpie to put a few dots in the center of the flowers as stamens.

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Here’s the back with a subtle marbled effect:

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Next I made a wall hanging.  Unfortunately, I forgot to take a picture of the organza I painted.   I call it “paintbrush.”  In the closeups you can see the brush  strokes if you look hard.

 

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I also got some great dimension:

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Here is the back:

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Now it is hanging in my kitchen.  Yes, the wall is teal.

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I’m very pleased with both projects.

Thanks Ruth for offering the class.  I really enjoyed it.

 

Is it Really Unfeltable?

Is it Really Unfeltable?

Comments 20 comments

A while back I had purchased a bunch of scarves from thrift shops and some sample fabrics from the fabric store.  All passed the “breath test” but some did not felt when I did samples.  I wrote about it here:

https://feltingandfiberstudio.com/2016/01/20/to-sample-or-not-to-sample/

Since we have been going thru our UFOs for the last quarter challenge, I came across these samples again and decided to try something different and use my Simplicity Needle Felting machine which sits idle because I’ve never got a handle on how to use it.

So I took the three felted samples I thought would felt and didn’t and ran them through the needle felting machine with all 12 needles.  As you can see on the gold piece moving the machine back and forth created a shirring pattern.  But that particular piece the the fabric is so stiff it made for a very spiky texture on both the front and back.

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Here are the backs:

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The flower scarf was the one I thought sure would wet felt. After the needle felting, it was a little stiff, but not as bad as the gold.  The green sparkly piece was also a little stiff but only on the top.

Since they were already wet felted. I tried another sample on prefelt of each of them. I also tried using hand felting, the needles just bounced off the fabrics. So, back to the machine. Then I wet felted it.

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It was still very coarse on the gold organza, but the other two were fine.  I still wasn’t satisfied because it seemed like 12 needles was overkill. So, I took out six of them and tried again on another prefelt then wet felting it afterward.

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Here are some closeups:

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I guess the bottom line is that if you really want to felt something, there are ways to do it.  However, the “hand” of the fabric may be more important for the final project than just being able to felt it. I suppose I could have used a coarser fiber, but for nuno I think softer (merino) is better.  After all you don’t really want to shave nuno felt.

I’ve found that sampling is definitely worth the time especially with the unknown.  What has your experience been?  Have you used a needle felting machine?  What is your experience?

Just a note:  Rosiepink, Lyn and Annie are having a give away of three copies of their revised pdf “Creating Felt Art.”  Their information is always organized and they give wonderful examples, photos and step by step instructions.  You can enter to win and get more information here:

http://rosiepink.typepad.co.uk/

Good luck!