After seeing Helene use some prefelt ribbon, I decided to give it a try too. I am thinking of differential shrinkage to get the shape of a shell. I thought it might work well with a spider conch shell to make the ridges.
I got my ribbon from the Olive Sparrow in Toronto. She doesn’t have it on her Etsy, but if you contact her, she has it. You can, of course, make prefelt and cut strips. But this is a fast and easy way to get going.
I made a 2-part resist so there would be an overlap on one side.
I made the inside pink, then added strips of the prefelt ribbon.
I added some blue for the outside. Sorry for the really bad picture.
Then of course the was lots of rubbing. I am using a rubbing tool from Moose Hill. It has a nice weight, not too heavy like others I have tried. I like to start gently. It does have a nice, wide handle, so it’s easy to hold and press down when that is what you want. Jan used my phone to take many of these pictures for me. She took about a dozen of this one, complaining that I was not smiling. Seems I do not smile when I am working.
Once it had shrunk a little, I cut out the resist and removed the non-spined side of the extra resist. If I left it, I think there would have been too much to curl inside for the middle of the shell. Then of course, fulling and shaping.
It wasn’t long into the fulling when I knew I had not used enough prefelt to get the differential shrinkage I wanted. I suppose I should have known better. But often that’s the way. You need to be reminded of what you already know.
Still, it didn’t turn out so bad
When I got home, I fulled the ridges in some and then clipped it all into shape to dry. As you can see, this made the base of the folded part pointy, and that remained after I took the clips off and let it spread out.
I wet just that part and fulled it back to round in a very short time. I had been anticipating a fight with it. I had tried to shrink this part more before clipping it with no success. This just reminded me of how, sometimes, it is easy to get more shrinkage after it has rested or dried and is rewet. I have no idea why that works, but it does.
After it was dry again, I was not happy with how the top with the points wanted to curl around instead of standing out, so I put a couple of invisible stitches at each end to hold it in position.
And finished. I like the finished shell, even if it didn’t go the way I planned.
I may give it another try over the summer, but as spring slowly arrives here( we had a little snow again the other day), I find I have lots of ideas and more energy to do things. I have things to make for the guild sale in the fall.
I got to teach a felted lantern cover class recently. It was mostly people who had never handled wool before. This class is fun, interesting and technical. This project requires a very thin layout, but if it develops holes, that’s ok because it lets the light out. It’s a great one to use to practice thin layout.
I made a new sample with prefelt shapes on the inside and sari silk on the outside. I didn’t have a sample of either of those. It always amazes me how much the sill disappears when you wet it, even on contrasting colours
And the finished sample. The inside shapes worked really well. Some of the mwere swallowed by the scrunched-up part, but that’s ok.
I had eight students. I let them choose if they wanted to make it all enough to be able to make part of it scrunched, or just tall enough for it to fit the glass vase/lantern. I almost forgot to take pictures. It was about an even split. Scrunching them makes a fairly simple design stand out.
I almost forgot to take pictures. Here they are laying out their wool, lots of different ideas.
Then, of course, there was all the rubbing and rolling
Here are some finished but still wet. I am not sure how I ended up with only 5 of them. I was sure I took a picture of each of them.
And here are some pictures my students sent me when they were all dry.
I think they look great. This is a great project if you don’t have a lot of time, but want the satisfaction of start to finish in one session.
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.
Edge Vessel
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.
commercial prefelt stripcarded batt layout carded batt prefelttop to bottom: merino strips from commercial prefelt, carded batt prefelt, tops prefelt Prefelt for black lines
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.
freehand shapered prefelt with circle templateMaking red circles
I was aiming for a very simple design, so played around arranging black strands and red circles in different combinations.
Testing out different layouts
Now to actually make a sample.
My chosen layout
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.
Sample 1 completed
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.
Sample 2 layout Sample 2 layout with extra layerSample 2 feltedSample 2
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 edgesSample 2 underside: very little migrationComparing undersides of samples 1 & 2
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.
Needle felted circleSample 3 layoutSample 3 felted Sample 3 finished with a printed treeSample 3 using needle felted circle
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.
layout for layers 1 & 3layout for layers 2 & 4Side 1 – still wetSide 2 – still wetSide 1 – nearly dryVessel with 2 circles: sample 4
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…..
As I sit down to begin this post the sky has darkened and the rain (fingers crossed) is about to fall, heaven knows we need it, but what a fabulous summer it’s been so far here in sunny Lincolnshire! I don’t know about you but I tend to not do too much in the way of creative stuff through July and August as there are too many distractions and this year the intense heat has made me feel very lazy so lots of time spent relaxing, reading and watching creative videos. Consequently I’ve now got a table of projects I want to finish and a head full of others I want to start!
A couple of projects I did do this summer are two wet felted vessels. The first one, inspired by a shrivelled seed pod, was made at the İFA Region 8’s Summer School in Arnesby near Leicester. Our region encompasses several counties and is so spread out we struggle to get our İFA members to attend. On the other hand we have a regular group of creative ‘non members’ in the locality who are more than welcome to come along to our events, and thankfully they do! It was a busy and fun two days…..
My seed pod began life as five leaf book resist measuring 27cm x 36cm and various colours of Merino and Corriedale fibres.
It’s final shape was formed after lots of pushing and pulling and using strong clips to get it to stay as I wanted it.I decided to keep the opening as tiny as possible and, as a consequence, the resist had to be ripped to shreds in order to remove it! I’m wondering about adding some hand embroidery here and there in the shape of circles using a dull gold thread, I think it’s lacking something but is that it?
The second vessel was started last Friday when I was working at the Usher Gallery in Lincoln. I’d seen a post somewhere mentioning they were having their second Artist Studio Day and inviting local artists to apply. If successful it meant I would get the use of a table in their ground floor workspace and get to spend the day with four other artists. It sounded like a great opportunity and I’m so glad I applied! Only four artists turned up on the day and unfortunately one of those had to leave early. My other two companions were both painters and it was nice to get to know a bit about them and watch them work. We had a few members of the public come in to see what we were doing but for most of the time it was very quiet which allowed us to focus on what we were doing.
Knowing I wouldn’t get finished, but would need to get my vessel to a stable state before leaving the gallery, meant I needed to do a bit of prep the day before. So I decided on a size, cut my circular resist and made this piece of prefelt combining threads, fabrics and fibres to cut up and use as surface decoration.
Prefelt for surface decoration
By the time we had to leave I had a stable prefelt that looked like a pizza and could be folded into my bag….it was too large to carry it flat!
The finished rock inspired vessel
One of the Summer pieces I’ve yet to finish is an Iris which I started at the end of July. This is going to be for the Lincolnshire Textile Groups Bountiful Botanicals competition taking place in October. I’m creating it from hand painted Tyvek fabric and wire and the flower will be approximately 30cm dia by 115cm tall. I’ve just got the leaves to do now and then I’ve got the perfect spot for it in my lounge when it’s finished. I don’t want to reveal too much before the competition so this is a sneak preview for now…..
Finally I’ll leave you with some images from this year’s fabulous Asylum Steampunk Festival. As ever there were some outstanding costumes, some very strange costumes and some that looked like they’d missed the theme altogether but it really didn’t matter! There were steampunk enthusiasts represented from all over the UK and from various European countries. One lady said she had come over from Hong Kong especially to join in the festival! The atmosphere is the friendliest you could imagine and the whole Cathedral Quarter was buzzing!
True to form I didn’t make time to create a costume but this year I did dig out a long skirt and a waistcoat as a (very) token gesture in order to wear my oversized steampunk dragonfly brooch.
The International Feltmakers Association has been running an annual Felt Swap – setting a theme and linking members who’ve elected to join the challenge with a “swap partner” from somewhere in the world – since 2020. I spotted the invitation to join in the 2025 swap on one of the regular emailed Newsletters and decided to have a go. I started to write this post about the entry and remembered that I’d entered the first Swap and had posted about it. However, when I trawled back through my posts to find the link for you, I found that I hadn’t actually written the post, let alone published it. So we’d better start there.
The subject of that challenge was “Light”. I thought a lot about this as it seemed such a wide subject and I didn’t know where to go with it.
To begin with I listed as many things as I could think of that could have anything at all to do with light and came up with: Light bulbs; Bright light – dazzling – blurred; Rainbow; Prisms and light splitting; Dark area with light coming in from one side; Sun beams from behind clouds; Fire light; Moon light; Lighthouse; Northern Lights.
Clouds and especially stormy skies fascinate me and I thought that I could do something with this idea. Initially I went for a sun low on the horizon just showing through some dark clouds but with rays going upwards behind the clouds. For some reason this was not a success so was abandoned.
Then we had a thunderstorm and I had a lightbulb moment! So I looked through some of Mr Google’s images just to remind myself what forked lightning looked like and then went for a storm over the sea, and used this image for reference.
Lightning at Sea
I have a collection of fibres, yarns and fabrics in my “stormy” project sack – too big to call a bag – and my first thought was to use some of those in the picture I had in mind. I had already made a mixed media image of a storm at sea using various textiles and fibres and thought of doing something similar.
Storm at the Coast
So I looked out some of the fabrics and yarns and other bits and pieces to see what I might use.
Part of my stash of “stormy” textiles
Some stormy fibres and some sequins to give light?
But in the end I decided that I wouldn’t use these for a couple of reasons: 1. this was supposed to be a “felt” swap; and 2. using the mixed media would possibly need a larger picture than I was making – we were limited to A5 size – 5.8 x 8.3 inches (sorry I don’t work in “the foreign” if I can help it). I did use my stormy fibres though.
I was reasonably happy with the picture after it had dried, but decided to do a bit of tidying up and embellishing with some needle felting.
This is the final result
The swap picture of LIGHTning
My swap partner, from Denmark, sent me a felt bag, which was really good. I didn’t want it to get dirty or damaged before I was able to use it and show it off so I wrapped it up and put it in a safe place. So safe that …..!
Anyway, back to this year’s swap. The theme for this one is “Inspired by an Artist”.
Again this was a very wide subject, first choose your favourite artist then find a piece of their work that sparks an idea. I don’t actually have a “favourite” artist, I love the work of many: Constable; Canaletto; Turner; Rowland Hilder; William Morris and most of the Arts and Crafts artists and architects; Rennie Mackintosh…. I could fill up the page with names. I trawled through works by most of these, bearing in mind the maximum size of the piece I was to make (8″ x 8″) the while. In the end I decided that I would go with Charles Rennie Mackintosh.
I searched google and found several stained glass windows, one wall carving and a draft fabric design that I liked.
Stained Glass at The Willow Restaurant
Rennie Mackintosh Roses
The terracotta tiles on the wall of Queens Cross Church
Stained glass window thought to be by Rennie Mackintosh – the whole window
In the end though, I decided to go with a section of the last one, which I squared up and manipulated to make it the right shape and size. The window is typical of the Art Nouveau period and “attributed to Mackintosh”. I could not find out if it is actually his design but it is certainly very like his work.
Stained glass window thought to be by Rennie Mackintosh – the whole window
Picking the reference section
Squaring the image (sort of)
I picked the centre of the window to work on and the enlarged and reshaped (slightly) design was printed off in greyscale and laminated. I would be able to use the laminated design as a base on which to lay out the fibres.
All ready to lay out the fibres
While I was looking through my stash for suitable fibres and pre-felts for the project I happened to glance at the design which was inverted. I immediately saw a face with an extremely runny nose!
This was when I spotted the runny nose!
Nevertheless I thought it would be fun to use the design of the face, since we were to produce something “inspired by” a favourite artist, rather than copy what s/he had produced. This would allow me to get rid of the runny nose and I also wanted to change the colour scheme.
I had decided to use a piece of pre-felt which I had bought from Wingham Woolwork some years ago, especially as it was slightly moth eaten and I could use what I might otherwise have to throw away. This was a lovely strong purple colour so I decided that my colour palette should be purple, turquoise and orange.
Picking colours and materials
The basic design was laid out in reverse, that is with turquoise knitting/felting yarn “face down” on the design, with some fillings-in of orange fibres on top and two squares of turquoise where the “eyes” would be. The purple pre-felt backing was placed on top of that and the whole wet felted. Unfortunately this resulted in the straight lines becoming distinctly wavy – a good job this wasn’t a straight copy of the original!
After the piece was rinsed, dried and ironed, the remainder of the design was added by needle felting (which, together with the shrinkage during wet felting, had effectively removed the moth holes) and finally some simple embroidery stitches.
Beginning the reversed layout of fibres
Just finished wet felting
Needle felting more features
With more features added with a sewing needle
The piece has been mounted on foam board for stability.
A few posts ago, I showed you some painted miniature landscapes. Why not try the same idea in felt? So off to my stash to figure out what I had to create these.
I found a variety of green wool as well as white, grey and blue for the skies. I also had some locks in black and dark grey and thought they might work well for tree trunks. I had a few sheets of various colors of commercial prefelt to use as a base.
I cut the prefelt into 5″ x 7″ pieces. I thought any smaller might really get difficult getting the wool to cooperate.
I decided to try one first before I made all of the landscapes. I used the pink prefelt and laid out a variety of greens for the foreground and white with a tiny bit of blue and grey for the sky.
I then laid out the trees with a very small bit of locks for the trunk and a bit of green for the leaves. Now on to wet felting it.
I wasn’t particularly happy with the locks after felting. They went right through the merino and I wasn’t careful enough, as they moved about. Now I had really hairy dark spots that looked nothing like tree trunks. But I was happy with the rest of the landscape. These shrank down to about 4″ x 6″. I probably could have shrunk them down further but since it’s a “painting” and not functional, I decided 4″ x 6″ was a good size. They will fit into 5″ x 7″ frames easily.
Since I wasn’t happy with the hairiness, I decided to shave the piece. I think it looks a bit better now. So on to the other six landscapes.
I laid out the other prefelts and added wool to create more landscapes. Then wet felting them all at the same time. The entire process took me about four hours.
Here they are completed. I like seeing them at thumbnail size as it doesn’t bring out any small details. But I will show you them in a bigger format for those of you who would like to see the details.
The plan is to get some frames for these and take them to the gallery. My bigger pieces haven’t been selling very well lately so I thought a smaller size option might be an easier purchase for people.
Sorry For the late post, I thought today was tomorrow.
Last weekend I had four ladies for a techniques class. This is not an advanced class, but it is also not a beginner class. People had to already know how to make felt.
First, we did inclusions. They used a piece of thicker prefelt and elastics to enclose some large glass beads (the kind they are used in the bottom of vases for decoration) and a felt ball. Then laying out a base and top they enclosed some glass beads, a felt ball, a circular resist with a hole and a squashed tasimo pod with a resist over it. Sorry, I forgot to grab the camera until they were at the rubbing stage. Part way through they cut some holes on top of the beads and pod.
When they were laying out I had them cover a pebble with 2 layers in different colours. I had them put a resist on top of the first layer and wrap it with the second colour. They popped them into a piece of nylon stocking to contain it all and make it easier to felt. You can see the first sample on the table in the picture below. They mostly felted the pebbles during lunch while eating and chatting. Once it was mostly done they cut a hole in the top and after healing the cut edge removed the resist and cut a smaller hole to reveal the pebble. Similar to the one below that I made a few years ago.
Next was cracked mud. I had them layout two 10×10 pieces( top and bottom) they added painter’s tape in 2 widths and then added the top
Naturally, because it was a wet felting class, they had to do some rolling.
I had them cut the mud sections at different stages of felting, prefelt, mostly done and done. so they could see how that affects it. I think they could have used more felting before the fulling but we had limited time and had to move on to book resists. I had them make a four-page book resist using half circles. they managed to get it laid out and wet down but then we were out of time so they had to take them home to finish.
3 students sent me pictures of the finished pieces. The first one she manipulated to look like origami.
And this one, She says it needs more fulling but wanted to get me the picture.
The third student got creative and combined her samples into a tea cozy.
All in all a good class. I just wish I could squeeze more techniques in. But no matter how fast you want to be felting takes time.
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.
Scarf I made more than 10 years agoView of scarf from the other end
‘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.
Light ‘rainbow’ prefelt
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.
Original scarf layout
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.
I have been volunteering in the shop attached to our local Museum for several years now. I have to keep an eye on the Museum, welcome any visitors, dispense information (if I can) and serve in the shop. Visitors are infrequent unfortunately and, because I get bored easily and can’t stand doing so, I tend to bring in something crafty to keep me occupied between times. As I am using the Museum’s electricity to light and heat my work space, I feel that I should use the time to make something that could be sold in the shop to help to raise funds for the Sturminster Newton Heritage Trust which runs the Museum and also the town’s Water Mill, renting the latter from the Pitt Rivers Estate.
I have told you about the Mill before here and thought you might like to hear a little about the Museum and the things I have made (or attempted to make) over the years to sell in the shop. Though first I must show you a chap who, a few years ago, came to visit the Mill with his mates from one of the local biker groups.
Biker Dog – So cool! I’ve forgotten what his name was, though it might have been Jack, but he certainly attracted a lot of attention from others visiting the mill at the time, and he lapped it up!
This is the building which the Museum Society, as it was then called, purchased from the Town Council in 2007.
The building started life in the 1500s as a cottage. In the early 1800s it came into the ownership of the then Lord Rivers and was occupied by a farmer/baker and then a well known clock maker (we have one of his grandfather clocks in the Museum). After being sold in the mid 1800s it was occupied by an insurance agent and then an auctioneer, before becoming a sweet shop and restaurant as well as a home.
Infamously, before the Second World War, the restaurant was visited for a meal by Oswald Mosley, founder of the British Union of Fascists.
After the war the property was bought by a solicitor and eventually sold to the Town Council in 1996. The Town Council occupied the building until 2007 when it was purchased by the then named Museum and Mill Society.
The Town Council moved into purpose built Council Chamber and offices, which are part of The Exchange building. The Exchange was built and opened in that year on the site of what had been the largest Calf Market in the country but which had closed some 10 years previously. The Town has had a market/fair since 1219, having been granted a Charter by King Henry III, and we continue to have a (much reduced) market each Monday with stalls around the town.
The first of my donations which the Museum sold (eventually) were these two small felt pictures of the Mill. They were my versions of photographs which Graham, my husband, had taken.
Mill Picture 1
Mill Picture 2
Then I had a go at crocheting snowflakes, which did sell quite well in the run up to one Christmas. I seem to remember that I have shown you these before but I can’t find the link so here are some of them again.
A few Snowflakes
The Museum Shop has a number of items to sell which sport images of the Mill, Museum and, in the case of tea towels, our mediæval bridge over the River Stour. I did use one of the tea towels to make a Memo Board for sale, with the intention of making a series of these if they sold. Unfortunately that was not to be, the Memo board I made is still hanging on the shop wall. Though to be honest I’m not sorry that there’s no call for more of them because it took a lot longer to make and was a lot more complicated than I had anticipated, and I had actually made it in my workshop rather than in the Museum shop, so it didn’t really meet any of my criteria.
The “one off” Tea Towel Memo Board.
In fact over the months I have come up with lots of different ideas for items for sale which haven’t worked: Making books in boxes using unsold cards sporting very old photographs of Stur (as the locals call Sturminster Newton). Making Etuis, but I couldn’t work out how to get Mill, museum or bridge images onto them; I would have had the same problem with making chatelaines with fabric covered thread cutters, scissors and needle books. I did think of making pincushions to sit inside glass or ceramic pots or ornaments bought from charity shops but I couldn’t find a way to make sure the pincushions stayed inside them without using lots of glue, which I hate doing. I did try fabric paper weights and door stops, but obviously couldn’t use my sewing machine in the shop and hand stitching would have taken ages and probably wouldn’t have been strong enough to keep inside the grains of rice, which I was to use for the weights.
I was fast giving up on ideas for things to sell in the shop when my stint at trying to sell my scarves and fabric covered note/sketch books in 1855, our Artisans “Superstore” https://www.1855sturminsternewton.co.uk/ came to an end. I had not been able to sell much during the 6 months I’d allowed myself so the Museum Shop ended up with most of the unsold stock!
Some of my Scarves
More Scarves
Nuno Scarf with beaded flower scarf pin
The covered books and the silk scarves aren’t on display at the moment due do lack of space.
I have at last found some things which I can make in the shop and which are going on sale in the runup to Christmas – I have become addicted to making Norwegian Gnomes. Some people these days call them Gonks, but they are nothing like the Gonks that used to be around in the 70s. Here’s one I made back then – it still sits on my landing windowsill. I can’t bring myself to get rid of it. It is made out of a hat which was left over after one of our WI jumble sales. I stuffed it, putting in a scrap fabric base, and added eyes, ears, hands, feet and a tail, and have loved it ever since!
My vintage Gonk
For the gnomes I used scrap fibres, mainly scoured but unprocessed merino, to make the basic shape and stitched large buttons on the bases to help keep them upright. I stitched on noses, in most cases these were wooden beads, though there were a couple of needle felted noses.
Gnome “cores”
I covered the bodies in various unused fibres, mainly prefelts or carded batts which had become compressed in storage, or failed UFOs. I added “hair” – some of the large stock of locks that I found in my stash (I’d forgotten that I’d got so much!) and added beards and moustaches from the same source. Then I covered the pointy hats with more of the fibres used for the bodies. A few of the Gnomes were female – plaits from scrap yarn rather than curly hair and facial fuzz.
I started off making Autumn Gnomes but soon ended up making Christmas ones. There were quite a collection in the end as I was making them at home and at various workshops as well as in the Museum – I told you I was addicted!
Gnome Manufactory at an IFA get together
Autumn Gnome and yet another scarf
Here’s what the Museum Shop looks like at the moment in it’s Christmas finery and with all the goodies currently for sale.
Some of the Gnomes already on display
Shop Display 1
Shop Display 2
Shop Display 3
Some of the books by local authors about the area and its history; and the Children’s Corner
Christmas Hamper Raffle
Christmas Goodies 1
Christmas Goodies 2
The Museum proper has 6 rooms housing various alternating displays which at the moment include:
Our famous writers/poets Thomas Hardy (he wrote The Return of the Native while living here); William Barnes (his dialect poetry is famous – you might remember the song Linden Lea – if you’re old enough!); and Robert Young (he also wrote dialect poetry under the nom de plume Rabin Hill).
A fascinating display on the history of weights and measures (for instance a cricket pitch measures 22 yards long, or a “Chain”. I always wondered why a chain? Now I understand, there was an actual metal chain used as we have one on display.)
We have the earliest map available of the Sturminster Newton and surrounding area dated 1783.
Swanskin (as mentioned in the link at the beginning of this post)
The Hinton St Mary Roman Mosaic – this was part of the floor of a Roman villa found in the next village up the road from us, which is also the base of the Pitt Rivers Estate previously mentioned. The mosaic was discovered in 1963 and unfortunately was removed and is now in the possession of The British Museum. It was hoped that it could be returned to Dorset when the Dorchester Museum was enlarged but they won’t let us have it back!
As part of the Roman display there are a number of photographs showing what flora and fauna was introduced to this country by the Romans. You’d be surprised what plants and animals they introduced that we now consider to be “native”.
Upstairs we have a new working model of Sturminster Newton Railway Station showing how it used to look before being closed in 1966. Very few of the original buildings are still here. That will be a permanent exhibit (hopefully!) whilst most of the others will change from time to time.
Certainly the Museum is well worth a visit at any time of the year.
Firstly, if you’re Jan and don’t want a spoiler about your card, stop reading immediately!
I think I’m jinxed. There, I said it. For last year’s seasonal card swap, I was paired with the lovely Hélène and the card I sent her was returned to me by Irish Customs, who didn’t deign my wares good enough to cross its country’s borders. This year, I am unable to send my finished card to Jan because Royal Mail says no (well, Canada post says no, they’re not accepting any mail until their strike is resolved).
If I take part in next year’s swap, you might want to avoid me as a partner…
This year I decided to take the notion of a postcard rather literally; I wanted something the size and look of one, and so decided to put my sewing machine to use.
I cut some pre-felt almost to size and marked down the lines typical of a postcard using a heat-erasable pen. See the twisted red wool on the top left corner of the photo? At first I had the idea of felting the lines with it, until I realised it would take me forever and not look half as good as using the sewing machine. I changed tactics.
After sewing those lines I wrote down my seasons greetings. I was ambitious in what I wanted to say, as you’re about to see.
Using yarn, I worked with a felting needle and carefully started following the outlines of the words. I immediately realised my “handwriting” wasn’t going to be as small as I intended. Oops. If you look carefully at the picture above, you’ll see the next word I was meant to write was “holidays,” which is larger than the already felted “Happy.”
Where did the word “holidays” go? Well, sometimes you have to pick your battles. Let’s pretend this was the plan all along, shall we?
And then, off to the decorating and making it a more seasonal card.
There was something missing in the background… so I did the foolish thing of working that part after having the foreground finished. However, I think it was worth it, but you can judge by yourselves.
Much better, I hope you agree! I particularly like the detail of the present with the bow made from yarn.
Now it was time to cut the card to size and glue it to a real postcard (a blank one made from watercolour paper). I sadly don’t have a good enough photo of the card’s front, so you’ll just have to imagine the above image in the correct size and without the markers that I removed with a steam iron.
Here’s the back of the card:
“I hope this card reaches you in time” was written before I knew Canada postal services were not only delaying deliveries but had altogether halted them. Sorry, Jan!
I will have this on its way to you as soon as possible.
(By the way, see the smudge under the flying bird? That wasn’t me being clumsy at all, no siree, that was completely on purpose and represents the movement and plight of the avian creature as it strives to reach its maximum potential. Cough cough…)
