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Felt So Good, Author Q&A, Review and Give Away

Felt So Good, Author Q&A, Review and Give Away

Comments 18 comments

We were contacted about reviewing this book and doing a give away. I thought our readers would appreciate a chance to win this new book Felt So Good by Tone Rørseth, published by Sellers Publishing, Inc in September. Tone is a well known for her design both in jewelry and accessories as well as being a photo stylist for interior design magazines.

Tone Rorseth
Tone Rørseth

Felting 3, 2, 1
Q-3 Three types of fibre you can’t live without?

Three types of fiber I can’t live without: I like the very soft merino wool. A contrast to that one is the natural wool coming straight from the sheep. I also use the 3 mm thick Nepal wool.

Q-2 Two tools you use all the time?

Two tools I use all the time: My different felting needles. I use very thin, medium and thick needles for different types of work/art. I also use soap and water for wet felting!

Q-1 One fibre art technique you love the most? 

Favorite technique: I love the needle technique the most, to me it´s a little similar to painting and drawing.

Felt So Good Cover

Now to Tone’s new book that just came out in September. Here’s what the publisher has to say about the book:

“Felt So Good is all about wool. A wonderfully versatile material, wool is a simple and satisfying fiber to work with, and that makes these projects very accessible for crafters of all levels.

Norwegian designer Tone Rørseth has put together a delightful collection of projects for clothing, accessories, and items for the home. She guides the reader through the different types of wool felt to buy and shows how to upcycle all of your slightly worn, slightly damaged, or out-of-style wool sweaters into fabulous new items for your wardrobe and your home. Readers learn how to choose, cut, restitch, felt, and embellish old sweater fabric, transforming it into beautiful handbags, mittens, scarves, hats, skirts, jewelry, soft toys, pillows, and more!

Rørseth’s designs are whimsical and fun, and most can be made in an evening or a weekend. She has even included a section dedicated to holiday decorations, such as garlands, tree ornaments, and table decor.”

Felt So Good Acorn Wreath

Felt So Good is 144 page long paperback book that is project based. There is one page about materials and techniques with a paragraph about needle felting, wet felting and “felting” (fulling) wool clothing in the washing machine. This book isn’t going to teach you how to felt but it is great for those of you who like to upcycle wool clothing and sweaters. There are many cute projects including accessories, wearables, home decor and holiday ideas.

The book is laid out with lots of photos of finished projects and basic written instructions. There are patterns at the end of the book for any of the more complex projects. There are not any step by step photos and the book assumes you know basic embroidery stitches and how to use a sewing machine.

Felt So Good Sleeves

And now for the give away. I have one copy of the book from the publishers to give away to our readers. So that anyone can be eligible to win the book, I will be shipping it to you instead of from the publisher. If you would like a chance to win, please leave a comment below and I will need to have your e-mail address so I can contact you if you win. The deadline for making a comment is October 22, 2014 and I will announce the winner of Felt So Good on October 23, 2014.

Felt So Good Woven Containers

If you’d like to check out the blog tour for this book, here’s the schedule:

10-16 Blacksheep’s Bit of the Web
10-17 I Hook Design
10-21 Funk and Weber Designs
10-22 Pittsburgh Knit & Crochet Festival
10-23 The Funky Felter
10-24 KarenWhooley.com
10-27 Poetry in Yarn
10-28 Funk and Weber Designs
10-29 Moogly
10-30 Monkey Mayhem
10-31 Mama O Knits/CraftLit
Giveaway Winner and Natural Wools and Fibres

Giveaway Winner and Natural Wools and Fibres

Comments 20 comments

GIVEAWAY WINNER:
The winner of the Complete Wet Felting Kit from Heidi Feathers is … Kirsty Lowde. Congratulations, Kirsty , please can you leave a comment on this post so I can pass your contact info on to Zoe so she can arrange to post it to you (you don’t need to post your email address, I can get that from the Admin panel!)

kirsty Lowde
NATURAL WOOLS AND FIBRES
You might have seen my post on the forum last week about a wall hanging I made using natural coloured wool tops from many different wool breeds and some different embellishment fibres. Someone usually asks, so this time I’ve measured 🙂 It’s 30 inches long and 10 inches wide.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAThis is the bottom end, some of the wools and fibres are: Bluefaced Leicester tops and noil, Humbug Jacob, Black Jacob tops and noil, Lincoln, Gotland, flax, hemp, soy top, milk top and viscose:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAThis is a close up of the soy top and Lincoln tops.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAAnd this is viscose tops on Zwartble with some Ingeo to the side.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAAs much as I love colours of dyed Merino or the textures of a nuno felted silk or shiny organza, I really love the variation of colours and textures you get with different combinations of natural wools and embellishment fibres. For as long as I’ve had natural wool tops and embellishment fibres I’ve been making various experimental pieces of felt with them, some just flat wet-felted, some combined with other techniques for a variety of surface designs or sculptural effects. When I got my recent World of Wool order and a few more breeds to try, I thought I’d also start to make a variety of small panels with the intention of maybe combining them into one large wall hanging some day. This is a panel I made using Manx Loaghtan wool tops and Bamboo staple fibre:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAThis is an angled photo of the panel I made with Grey Herdick wool tops and Hemp fibre:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAAnd this last piece is something I made alongside the top stripey piece:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAThanks again to Heidi Feathers for the generous giveaway prize and prefelt pieces to try out.

 

Meet The Supplier and a Giveaway

Meet The Supplier and a Giveaway

Comments 47 comments

Meet the Supplier

Banner
Fibre 3, 2, 1

Q-3 Three types of fibre you can’t live without?
Angelina fibres, I did not think I would like this fibre until I started using it and now love the bit of sparkle it adds. Also merino pre felt, and wool tops, especially dyed merino.

Q-2 Two tools you use all the time?
Twisted felting needles because they felt evenly throughout your piece and leave a smoother finished surface. The other tool has to be my Janome sewing machine, I love to be able to make practical but beautiful things like blinds and bags with cotton and linen fabrics.

Q-1 One fibre art technique you love the most?
Wet felting, both pictures and 3D forms. I enjoy the creating, and rinsing off the soap to see the final piece is great. Even if it’s not quite how you expected there is always something a little bit lovely about what has been made.

PrefeltB
General Questions

What is your business?
heidifeathers is an online felting supplies business

What kind of items do you sell?
We sell wool bundle mixes, needle felting kits, wet felting kits and drop spinning kits, pre felt bundles, nepps, glass eyes, felting needles, dyes, dyed tussah and mulberry silk fibres, scarves, angelina fibres and other felting tools, basically we are a one stop shop for felting.

mulberry tops 3What do you think makes your business different from similar ones?
We offer lots of colour! Lots of mixed items such as wool bundles, silk bundles, and pre felt bundles, giving you variety so you don’t have to choose. We stock a lot of felting related fibres, tools (including an extensive range of felting needles). We offer all the supplies you need so you can experiment with felting. We care about the customer and are always willing to offer help and also care about stocking good quality items.

merino playful2What can you make with your kits?
Our kits all come with instruction. The needle felting kits come with a 24 page booklet with 6 projects and wool for plenty more. The wet felting kit has 3 projects and some other basic information about wet felting, again there is wool for lots of other ideas and we include a template and instruction for making a purse. The spinning kits explain how to spin wool tops in to two ply yarn using a drop spindle.

kit2Where are you located?
We are an online business based in the Cotswolds

Where can we find you on the internet?
www.heidifeathers.com, also on etsy at www.etsy.com/uk/shop/sweetgorgeousthings  and ebay http://stores.ebay.co.uk/heidifeathers

GIVEAWAY:
Heidi Feathers is offering a very generous prize for a giveaway. Because of the size and subsequent postage costs, this giveaway is only available for postage within the UK. That doesn’t mean you have to live in the UK to enter though, feel free to enter as long as the recipient is in the UK 🙂

giveaway Kit2 The prize is a complete Wet Felting Kit. Zoe from Heidi Feathers says “The kit is a high quality wet felting kit which is fun and easy to use for any age, with everything you need to start wet felting (besides warm water)” The kit contains: 200g of the finest soft merino tops (21 Micron) in 20 beautiful colours including pinks, blues, greens, orange, yellow, greys, browns, purples, reds, black and white; one large piece of bubble wrap; one large piece of voile; one light weight rolling pin; one small cloth; one block of pure olive oil soap, and one bamboo rolling mat 45cm x 30. It also includes a 3D re-useable template for making a purse and instructions for three felting projects to make:  A bead, a picture and a purse.

All you have to do to enter, is leave a comment to this post. Check back on Thursday 5th June for the winner to be announced, and please leave a comment on the announcement post so your details can be passed on to Zoe.

Thanks a lot to Heidi Feathers for answering our questions and for the very generous giveaway 🙂 Please have a look at the sites and the great variety of products.

Giveaway Winner

Giveaway Winner

Comments 10 comments

Last Friday, I offered a Giveaway Prize of my new PDF ‘Handmade Felt Book-Cover Project‘ together with a Project Pack of everything you need to make a book cover (wool, fabric, fibres, delrin clip, thread).

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAThis morning, I printed out all the names of everyone who entered, cut them out, folded them up, put them in a plastic teapot (it was closer than my hat!), swished them around and the winner is … Vicky Petrie 🙂

Giveaway winnerVicky, can you post a reply to this post, so that I can get your email to send you the PDF and ask you what colours and fibres you want in your fibre pack? (Don’t post your email, it’ll show up on the Admin page) Thanks a lot 🙂

If anyone is interested in the PDF, all the details are on my blog, here, or on etsy.

I haven’t done anything else this week, so here’s some Supermacro photos 🙂

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAOLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

Giveaway!

Giveaway!

Comments 44 comments

Final CoverI’ve just finished a  tutorial with everything you need to know to make a piece of flat felt and turn it into a book-cover with a flap closure and delrin clip. It took forever because I started toying with the idea of doing workshops and started working on updating and expanding my Wet Felting tutorial, and I also wanted to do the tutorial for making the book cover, and in the end I decided to combine them.
I thought I’d never finish, but I finally got it uploaded to the hosting site yesterday (hopefully, I did it right!) so I’m giving away a copy. It’s a 59 page PDF and has lots of different sections and loads of photos right through the whole process of planning, making a sample, laying out the wool and fibres, wet felting, cutting out the pieces, and sewing it together. For more details you can read the full blurb on my blog.

Compilation 2You don’t need to do anything special to enter, just leave a comment on this post. If you’d like to spread the word through your blog or facebook etc, it would be very much appreciated but it isn’t a requirement. I will randomly draw the winner 6 days from now, on Thursday 27th February 2014, so please check back on the 27th to see if you’ve won, and leave a comment on the announcement post so I can contact you with the download information.

comp picAlso … together with the tutorial, I am giving away a custom ‘Project Pack’: enough wool, fabrics and embellishment fibres to make a sample and piece of felt big enough to make a cover for an A5 notebook ( they’re about 21 x 15cm or 8 x 6″), a delrin clip and embroidery thread. I’ll make up the wool batts to your specifications, whichever colour theme you want, which embellishment fibres to blend in, some texturey wools if you like, etc.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAI’ll even do you a pink theme if you like 😉

And The Winner Is…

And The Winner Is…

Comments 8 comments

Last week, in my cheese cloth post, I offered a give away of hand dyed cheesecloth. There were 14 people who replied and random.org chose #1 out of 14. So Lyn, you have won the give away. Congratulations! I wish I could give everyone some of the cheese cloth that cheeseclothfabric.com sent me, but we’ll all post our results to show you what we created. Lyn please e-mail me the address where to send the cheese cloth. Hopefully, I’ll get it dyed tomorrow or over the weekend.

Homeless Love by Mary Pal

I thought you might enjoy another cheese cloth portrait by Mary Pal. If you didn’t get a chance before, do check out her website.

On another note, have you started on the first quarter challenge? You might want to check out the forum challenge section as Carole has done a wonderful challenge piece and even has a video of her “Jackson Pollock” painting technique. We’d all love to see your challenge piece too. You can just reply to the forum thread that in the link above. You do have to be a member of the forum to post but that just takes a quick sign up.

 

Using Cheese Cloth in Textiles

Using Cheese Cloth in Textiles

Comments 42 comments

Cheese cloth must have hundreds of uses and many fiber artists use cheese cloth in their work. Debra from Cheese Cloth Fabric.com sent me a sample of their cheese cloth recently to post about.

Cheese Cloth from Cheeseclothfabric.comHere’s the package I received and there is lots of cheese cloth here. Thanks Debra! If you check out their site, you’ll see that they have a variety of grades of cheese cloth and they sell in large quantities. Unfortunately, they only ship to US addresses at this time but their cheese cloth is very affordable especially if you need large quantities.

Closer View of Cheese Cloth

Cheese cloth is graded by the number of vertical and horizontal threads per inch. The grades range from #10 to #90. I have also seen #30, #40, #50 and #60. #10 grade has 20 x 12 threads per inch and #90 has 44 x 36 threads per inch. You can see in the photo above that this is one of the higher grades of cheese cloth. In the US, the cheese cloth that you find in the grocery stores is usually #10 grade.

Spices on Cheese Cloth

Many of the uses for cheese cloth are things that you might do in the kitchen. You can strain stock or broth, use as a spice or tea bag, thicken yogurt, make tofu, cover a lemon so that when you squeeze it, no seeds will pop out or even make cheese!

Spice BagI used a bit of the cheese cloth to make a spice bag for hot spiced cider over the holidays.

In the Spiced CiderHere it is simmering in the cider. But the point of this post is using cheese cloth in textiles. I have made several samples as well as a few different pieces with cheese cloth.

Ice Dyed Cheese Cloth

Cheese cloth is easy to dye. The photo above was dyed with the ice dyeing method. Fiber reactive dyes are best for dyeing cheese cloth since it is cotton.

Cheese Cloth FlowerI recently used the ice dyed cheese cloth to make little flowers.

Cheese Cloth Flowers AttachedI’m thinking about adding the little flowers to this stitched piece. The cheese cloth flowers are just pinned on right now but I am sure that I’ll use some of them.

Cheese Cloth in FeltYou can use cheese cloth to provide texture in felting. The cheese cloth in this piece is just above the white novelty yarn.

Cheese Cloth Used as StrengthenerYou can use cheese cloth in between layers of wool to provide strength. This notebook cover has cheese cloth in the middle of the felt. You can’t see it at all but it works great for items that will get a lot of wear and tear.

Ruching Cheese Cloth SampleThis sample has cheese cloth that has been ruched and then stitched down. You can either do the stitching by machine or by hand.

Cheesecloth SampleHere’s another sample where cheese cloth was stitched down in rows very close together. I also used cheese cloth to make a stitched cord. I love how organic the cheese cloth looks when you fray it.

Barn by Lynette BarnesThis piece is by my class mate Lynette Barnes. She used cheese cloth to depict moss on an old barn. Isn’t it cool?

Side View Cheesecloth Layers

This is an experimental piece in which I wanted to make ruffles of cheese cloth across a piece of felt. The edges of the cheese cloth were covered with wool and placed in rows and then felted.

Sizing Up by Mary Pal

Cheese cloth can even be used in fine art. I just love these portraits by Mary Pal. She “paints” with cheese cloth. I find this quite amazing.

Bark 12 by Kathyanne White

Another interesting use of cheese cloth is using it as a print surface. Kathyanne White uses many alternative surfaces to print photos and cheese cloth is just one of them. She even has a post about printing on to felt.

Indecision by Alicia Forestall-Boehm

Cheese cloth can even be used in sculpture. The piece above by Alicia Forestall-Boehm is one of many that she combines encaustic and cheese cloth as well as wire and foam.

My plan now is to dye the cheese cloth that I received from cheeseclothfabric.com and do some experimenting. I am going to send a portion of the cheese cloth to Zed and to Ann so I thought it would be fun if I gave away another portion to anyone who is interested in playing with cheese cloth. So if you’d like to have some dyed cheese cloth, just leave a comment below and tell me what color you’d like and how you plan to use it. I’ll draw a name on January 23rd and announce the winner on that date.  I will send the winner the dyed cheese cloth once it’s finished which will be in a couple of weeks.  Zed and Ann, let me know what colors you would like as well. Then I’ll write another post and show the results of all our cheese cloth experiments.

(We have no affiliation with cheeseclothfabric.com except that they offered to send us some free cheese cloth in exchange for posting about it.)

Giveaway Winner and Latest Project

Giveaway Winner and Latest Project

Comments 12 comments

The winner of Polymer Clay Simply Made is…. Anne L. Congratulations, Anne! Please leave a comment so I can send you a download link. Thanks a lot for all the entries and all the nice comments too 🙂

Giveaway winnerI thought it was time for a well earned rest after finishing the Polymer clay book, we had a ridiculous heatwave here too, so it was far too hot to blink without sweating. I took refuge downstairs where it was a bit cooler for a few days and then had a look through my felt box to see what I could work on next. I found the pink nuno pieces I made for Ann’s Challenge and decided to work on those. I started with the larger piece I made for a notebook cover. I’d measured carefully when I made the piece so I’d get the ruffles just on the front and back. This is the front:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAAnd this is the back:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAI must have measured properly because it worked out well. I didn’t want any of the ruffles where the flaps for the inside would go.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAI’m going to swap the notebook for a red one, then list this on etsy. I’ve already cut the other piece for making a camera case, so as long as it stays cooler, I’ll work on that next.

Giveaway—Polymer Clay Simply Made PDF e-book

Giveaway—Polymer Clay Simply Made PDF e-book

Comments 35 comments

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAI know we’re all about felting, fabrics and fibrey things here, but I know most of us have lots of different creative interests, and also like to learn new things so I’m giving away a copy of my new PDF e-book called Polymer Clay Simply Made. It’s all about how to produce smooth, even clay for using with lots of different techniques to create unique, interesting polymer clay pieces, such as brooches, buttons, tiles, pendants etc, and how to do it without having to buy expensive or specialist equipment and products. It is suitable for complete beginners, and anyone who hasn’t even opened a packet of polymer clay before can create items like those on the cover in a matter of minutes. For more details you can read the full blurb on my blog or a recent post here.

You don’t need to do anything special to enter, just leave a comment on this post. If you’d like to spread the word through your blog or facebook etc, it would be very much appreciated but it isn’t a requirement. I will randomly draw the winner 8 days from now, on Sunday 28th July 2013, so please check back on the 28th to see if you’ve won and leave a comment on the announcement post so I can contact you with the download information.

PAGESIf felting is more your thing, Annie and Lyn at rosiepink are doing a giveaway of their excellent new e-book ‘How To Make 3D Felt Vessels Using Flat Resists’. For info on the book have a look at this page.

*** The Giveaway has ended now, please check this post for the winner

Beyond Nuno Giveaway Winner…and about the Studio Site

Beyond Nuno Giveaway Winner…and about the Studio Site

Comments 19 comments

The Winner of the Beyond Nuno Giveaway is … Wendy who commented on February 25th. Congratulations, Wendy 🙂 Please will you leave a comment on this post so I can email you with the download details, Thanks 🙂  Thanks a lot for entering and for leaving such nice comments, everyone 🙂

Beyond Nuno giveaway winner

A Guide to The Felting and Fiber Studio Site

We’ve had a lot of new visitors to the Studio site recently, and lots of new members on the forum, so I thought it might be time to do a reminder about everything we have to offer here on the Studio site. Before we started the blog just over a year ago, the four of us spent about 6 weeks working on the site, filling it with as much info as we could. We wanted to build the site into a valuable ‘One-Stop’ resource for anyone interested in felting and fibre.

Studio About us2The ‘About Us’ page tells you a little bit about why we started the Studio site, and there are sub pages for each of us with some info about ourselves and our interests.

Studio Felting Pages

In the Felting section there’s a short introduction about the many different kinds of felting. The main pages for Machine, Needle, Nuno and Wet felting all have more in-depth information, and each has a gallery page with many different examples of that particular type of felting.

Studio Mixed media

Mixed media simply means artwork that is made with more than one medium, but for the purpose of the site we use it to mean artwork made mainly with felt or fabric combined with other materials. This section features pages about Beads and Beading, Hand Stitching, Machine Stitching and Surface Design. Each page’s gallery features many examples of artwork.

Studio Fibers

The Fibers section is packed full of information about wool and other animal fibres. The main Fibers page explains some of the different terms that are used to describe wool in its various stages of processing. The Wool and Other Animal Fibers page has a lot of information about wool, animal fibres from animals such as Alpaca, Angora goat, Llama and Camel. There is also an explanation of the Micron and Bradford Count systems of measuring a fibre’s fineness or coarseness; and a PDF guide to the most common sheep breeds and their Bradford and Micron numbers. The gallery page features photos of different animal fibres. Preparing Fibers has a guide to processing your own wool, from washing a raw fleece to carding it into fluffy batts ready for felting or spinning. There is a photo set and detailed description.

Studio other Fibers

The Other Fibers section has lots of information about the non animal fibres we commonly use in felting, such as silk and organza fabrics; fibre prepared into tops like bamboo, banana, viscose, and the more unusual fibres like crimped nylon, plastic and Angelina fibres.

The Silk page shows the many different silk products available, for example, silk carrier rods, silk hankies and silk throwster’s waste and the gallery page features many uses of these. The Man-made fibers page and its gallery have examples of fibres and their uses including commercial art yarns and  some nuno felt examples with synthetic fabrics. The Plant Based Fibers page has many examples of these gorgeous luxurious fibres and felted pieces using them.

Studio tutorials

The Tutorials section is another area with a wealth of information. There are free Dyeing, Felting, Fiber preparation and Mixed media tutorials all written by one of us, including a video on how to make your own roving using a diz, PDFs on Degumming silk and dyeing it; Stitching on felt, making mixed media wall art, using a sander for wet-felting, a beginners guide to using a drop spindle and dyeing with food colouring.

And if you can’t find what you want there, there are also links to outside sites in the Links/Resources section, including rosiepink’s free felting tutorials and their fantastic e-book showing how to make amazing felt artwork and Ruth’s book The Complete Photo Guide To Felting.

So, make yourself comfortable and come and have a look around the site.  We’re always happy to read comments and listen to suggestions for adding more to the site, or to requests for articles or tutorials. Maybe you are a fibre artist with an interesting skill that would make a great feature or you’d like us to link to a tutorial, if you have anything felt or fibre related you want to tell us about, we’d love to hear about it 🙂