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Author: zedster66

Felted Case

Felted Case

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This week, I made a case for my best friend’s birthday. I made it all in one piece using a resist. I laid out a piece of silk on the resist first so that the back inside had a nice pattern, I also thought this would help strengthen the flap so it doesn’t stretch if it’s opened often. This is the front with the flap open:

And the back with the flap open:

This is how it looked with the flap closed:

I used some dyed silk throwster’s waste and dyed soy staple for the embellishments:

The silk has a paisley design on it, which can still be seen, but close up you can’t tell with the texture:

I always have trouble choosing buttons for cases/purses etc. I’m sure I said this last time, but I really need to make some more buttons out of polymer clay. I bought a bag of green buttons at a hobby fair about a year ago, I thought this one was quite nice, but a bit small:

I liked this ‘fancy’ button, but it’s a bit big and too thick:

This was my favourite and what I ended up using:

I blanket stitched around the button hole and around the opening/flap, but didn’t get chance to photograph it finished. My friend loves it and he’s already using it 🙂

Another 4th Quarter Challenge Sample

Another 4th Quarter Challenge Sample

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Sorry for the late posting, like Ann last week I lost track of the days and missed getting some photos in the brief window of time we call ‘day’ here at this time of year! I managed to get some decent ones today, though it ended up being one of those days where every time you try to do something, another thing comes up! I had another idea for combining wool tubes and fabric which I wanted to try, so did that this week. I wanted to see the effect of wrapping fabric around wool tubes and then felting. I thought it’d be a good way to see the results if I used the same colour wool for the tubes as my base colour. Green always works well on camera, so I used that. I planned on using a few different fabrics in white, but only had cotton gauze and synthetic chiffon on hand, here’s the finished piece:

I did think some pieces would be very flat, but it turned out they all kept a fair bit of dimension:

I think this piece of synthetic chiffon had the most dimension/texture:

It was the only chiffon piece which I wrapped around the wool along its length, it uncurled along one edge, this is the edge still rolled under:

The other strips of chiffon were wrapped around the wool-wrapped kebab skewers diagonally:

This is one of the gauze wrapped pieces which I wrapped diagonally, above:

And from the side:

And this is one I wrapped horizontally along its length:

I think if I want to use this idea to better effect, I should maybe try a sample using more, and less wool in the centre. I can see it being usefull with less wool for getting a defined shape/line with little texture, or using more wool for creating a more 3D piece. Maybe a sample with narrower strips of fabric wound around would be good too.

Recent Pieces:

Recent Pieces:

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I finally got photos of the piece I showed being laid out a couple of weeks ago. It was dark purple in the middle with black at each end, and I used lots of different natural fibres on it:

I like these photos on an angle:

I think this was tussah silk:

And this is soy fibre:

My friend had some hair ‘decoration’ things that she was throwing away after using, so I thought I would see how they felted 🙂 She had plaited (braided) them into her hair, I forgot to ask if they came wavy or not. I used some wool tops I got in a bag of Botany Lap waste. It’s a natural grey colour, but has the odd bit of Angelina fibre blended in. I couldn’t see any, though:

You can see better from this angle how they attached:

Where it was thinner/spread out it really blended in:

I liked how it looked where it was thicker:

I don’t know what the wool is, it’s really soft, and the colours look like a blend of grey and oatmeal Bluefaced Leicester. This is the back:

But the edges are like a breed with curlier locks:

Have you tried any new or unusual fibres or embellishments lately?

More Well Being Pieces

More Well Being Pieces

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We got the boxes of embellishments and fabric strips out at the Well Being centre yesterday:

Cath started with some handspun yarn, dyed BFL and undyed wool locks (it’s upside down because I took it from my side of the table!):

Then she added some fabric strips, I think they were all silk:

Action shot:

This is it finished, but still wet:

I made some new wool tubes on the kebab sticks for my piece. The photos didn’t turn out as good this week, and I was a bit distracted as we had a couple of people in to learn about the group. I wrapped the wool around first then wrapped different fibres around:

It was felted at this stage:

I don’t know if you can actually tell from this photo, but I fulled it a bit more to shrink/thicken it:

This is the piece dried. It was getting late when I took the photos, so unfortunately not many came out. I used ‘budget filling’ on the 4th tube along on the bottom, I liked how different that one looked to the others:

This is the only close up which wasn’t blurred:

I also didn’t get photos of my piece from last week, sorry. Cath did, but my phone wouldn’t download the pics! Hopefully I’ll have them next week 🙂

Well Being Centre

Well Being Centre

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I think I’ve posted a couple of photos from the Well-Being centre once or twice before, but definitely not for a while, so I thought I’d take some to share today. There were only two of us in the class, so it’s easy to see the room better. This is from the window end looking towards the door, a massive sink is on the right:

I took these photos on my phone so they’re not the best quality, but the colours are a lot better. This is from the window end again, we usually have the equipment on the side table and if we get a lot of supplies out, we put them on the grey benches under the window.

Since there was just the two of us, we put it all on the side table:

The room is used by lots of different craft groups, there are supplies and examples of work all around:

Cath was making a coaster with lots of natural wools:

She’s trying to sneak some Gotland locks while I’m taking the photo!

Action shot:

I was working on a black and purple piece with lots of undyed fibres:

As usual we ended up chatting loads and I didn’t get any more photos, but I’ll try to remember to show the finished pieces next time 🙂

Production Anxiety

Production Anxiety

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Leonor’s post got me thinking – we don’t only just post ‘positive’ things here on the blog, for example, we’ll often make mistakes, get stuck, have inspiration block, or need ideas which we ask for help with – but we don’t often talk about the harder struggles of being creative or trying to run a business with our art and creations. I know that I’ve mentioned on a few occasions the difficulties in trying to find a balance between making things I enjoy, with making things which might sell. The reality is much harsher though. Sometimes the anxiety over it makes it hard to even function and produce anything at all. You’re so scared that even after lots of consideration, the thing you decide to spend your time doing will ultimately be a complete waste, that you spend that time stressing and worrying, and do absolutely nothing.

Add to that the pressure of coming up with something to blog about every 8 days, and I’ll admit that sometimes I really hate everything about felting and fibre arts. Once you’re committed to running a blog or a business though, it isn’t that easy to just give up and stop doing it. I was meant to do a craft fair last weekend, but didn’t feel up to doing it in the end. The people who run it and about 99% of the people who attend are always lovely, but still, the pressure to sell, and stand in front of people while they judge your creations can be quite overwhelming.

I still had my boxes packed up almost a week later, and was tempted to just leave them like that till the next fair in a month. But I thought I’d unpack them, do a bit of a stock-check, and take advantage of my best friend’s fresh eyes and endless ideas to hopefully give me some new perspective and enthusiasm for making and selling. I also thought that taking some photos of my current ‘inventory’ would provide some content for my looming blog post, which I hadn’t planned to be so ‘heavy’, but then I finally tackled the backlog of blog posts I’d been too anxious to read because there were so many it seemed like a mammoth task, and the post from Leonor got me thinking about my current anxieties and how bad mental health/well-being affects productivity and creativity.

This probably sounds ridiculous to many of you, hopefully a lot more than it resonates with anyway, but I’m fairly certain there are plenty of you thinking ‘OMG, I get like that ‘ or ‘So it isn’t just me?!’. I don’t have any advice for how to overcome it, sometimes all it takes is for someone (usually Ann, oddly enough) to ask if I’ve seen a question on the forum (which I also get anxious about neglecting) and I’ll go to look, check out all the other posts I’ve missed, then finding myself inspired by colourful posts of creativity and encourageing comments, come back to the blog to tackle the backlog here! Othertimes, like today as I write this, it takes a determined effort. If you’ve made it this far, thanks for reading, and apologies for the unusually serious nature of the post, but for once I didn’t have to struggle to come up with content, it just wrote itself. So, here’s some photos of colourful things I’ll be selling on my Winter Fair stall in a few weeks!

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Tubes and Mats

Tubes and Mats

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I enjoyed playing around with the tubes at the well being centre, so decided to make another piece last week. I think it’s because the tubes are already made, so there are less decisions/choices which makes it even more ‘mindless’ and relaxing! I didn’t even really think about background colours too much, I just knew I didn’t want blues, so grabbed a bag of pinks and oranges. I wasn’t aiming for another challenge piece, I just wanted something simple with a bit of contrast:

The tubes I used had quite a lot of fibres blended in, they’re a bit more obvious from this angle:

And, maybe it’s just me, but the whole piece looks very different depending which way around it is:

A close up I like:

Earlier this year, I made a mat with the intention of taking it out with me for when it’s cold, so I can sit on it at the bus stop! I got the idea when I needed to sit down, but the wall was freezing, so I took off my woollen gloves to sit on. I actually didn’t get a chance to try it, but here it is:

The temperature suddenly dropped here recently, and it reminded me of the mat, so I thought I’d make another:

If this weather continues, I might have to make a blanket for my knees too!

More Natural Wools and Fibres

More Natural Wools and Fibres

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I was looking through my flickr account recently for some photos to use on a flyer for the well being centre, and I came across some felt pieces I made with natural fibres and natural wool combinations. I haven’t done a post about ‘naturals’ for a while so I thought you might enjoy this old post from 2012:

Another couple of natural wool and natural fibre combinations I’ve used recently are Oatmeal Bluefaced Leicester with Ingeo top, and Humbug Jacob Tops with black and white Bamboo tops.

Humbug Jacob tops are a stripey blend of black and white Jacob wool tops. Just on its own it produces a nice result, but I thought I’d try using strips of black and white bamboo tops for effect. Both bamboos are really soft, white bamboo looks silky, but black bamboo is fluffy and more like fluffy cat fur. They felt quite differently too, the white keeps its silkiness and shines really nicely, and the black almost fades into the background, staying very matt.

Ingeo is made from corn, it is soft and shiny and smells faintly of caramel 🙂 I decided to cover the whole piece with Ingeo as it has such a lovely sheen. This was another fibre which shone even in dim light. The effect after drying is gorgeous, Ingeo is such a nice silky fibre and went really well with the Oatmeal Bluefaced Leicester. I think this combination would make a lovely soft and shiny scarf.

*The previous post I’d made was also about natural wools and fibres, if you’re interested, you can find it here

4th Quarter Challenge Sample

4th Quarter Challenge Sample

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I thought I’d try an idea out for the 4th Quarter Challenge. The basic idea was to use wool tubes with fabric, some under, and some over. Because they are quite thin and hollow, I thought they probably wouldn’t have much effect on the fabric, other than visual. I did use a couple of wool twists too. This is the finished piece:

When I’d rinsed it and squeezed the water out, I didn’t roll it in a towel or try to flatten/smooth it, like I usually do, I wanted to keep the texture. You can see it from this angle:

And this one:

This is a strip of cotton gauze:

This is some synthetic chiffon. I’m guessing I used twists under this piece because there seems to be more of an effect:

The close up photos of the silk strip didn’t turn out, but here’s where silk, cotton gauze and silk taffeta all meet:

This is a close up of the Silk Taffeta, I used twists over and under this:

I used some heavier synthetic chiffon. I know this fabric doesn’t attach very firmly, but I like to use it because it does ripple nicely and looks good:

I love my camera! I can see inside the ripple here:

It’s given me a better idea of what I might do on a bigger piece. How are your ideas coming?

4th Quarter Challenge 2018

4th Quarter Challenge 2018

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The theme of this year’s challenge has been Surface Design. So far, we’ve had Mixed Media, Nuno Felting, and Beneath the Surface. I was torn between a couple of ideas, but went with the one I had when the 4 of us discussed the theme for this year: something about rolling and twisting fibres. So my challenge is: Twists, Tubes and Yarns. I made a post not too long ago with some pieces I made with wool twists and tubes, and there is a video at the bottom which shows how to make the tubes using a kebab skewer. This is a pile of softly twisted wool I made:

To make the twists, I take small amounts of wool and fibres and while holding one end, roll the fibres across a surface, a piece of bubble-wrap is good. I then hold the other end, and twist again. You can ‘set’ the twist by spraying with a little water too. I made this piece about 10 years ago, it’s still one of my favourites:

You can make blends of wool in different colours, or blend fibres in. This piece is made with twists of wool and plastic fibre:

And, this piece is made with twists made with wool and commercial novelty yarns:

The wool tubes, or ‘kebabs’ are something I love to make, just making a pile of them feels creative and is really relaxing. I first made them accidentally when I realised a kebab skewer was great for poking into my little hand carders to pick up trapped fibres, and they’d come out easily if I rolled it around. I ended up with some funky/random tubes.

Like the wool twists, the wool tubes can be made of just wool, or wool blended with fibres, threads etc. Have a look at this post for some ideas: https://feltingandfiberstudio.com/2017/08/14/felted-wool-kebabs/
This is one of my fave pieces, probably because it had very little planning/thinking involved, I just grabbed a couple of colours of Merino and a handful of already made tubes:

Handmade yarns can be made from anything you can twist (try organza or plastic bags if you haven’t already!) and can be used in many ways. This piece is made with wool and some old threads and unravellings from fabric, from a previous challenge:

This is a wet felted piece I made using some of my earliest attempts at making hand made yarn on a drop spindle:

I tried out some other early yarn that I made on two pieces, one was wet felted:

And the other was needle felted:

It’s great for weaving with:

Or, if you want something a bit more adventurous, how about needling it onto a vessel (scroll down) https://feltingandfiberstudio.com/2012/12/12/yarny-vessel/

So, there’s just a few ideas, if you’ve tried some or all of these before, step out of your comfort zone, try something new, and maybe even use some of this years previous challenges for inspiration or in combination!