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Category: Prefelt

Odds and Ends

Odds and Ends

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This past weekend, my husband and I drove up to Wisconsin for a weekend away.  I had hoped we’d see plenty of fabulous fall colors I could share.  Unfortunately, Wisconsin is suffering from the same drought we have here in Illinois and we arrived a week earlier than the peak.  Many of their trees have lost their leaves already, like ours here. But here is one fallish pic entering Wisconsin.

I haven’t been too productive this week.  But I do have a few projects I have put finishing touches on and haven’t shared.

I signed up for Ruth’s Printing and Stenciling on Felt class, so I managed to make a couple of handmade prefelts to play with.  I have plenty of commercial.  The purple was some unknown fiber batt. I decided to use a silk hankie to give it a little sparkle, but it didn’t.

The turquoise is commercial prefelt with some throwsters waste which isn’t very evident.

I think I will be able to use both sides just to experiment. I like the sides without the silk better.

I also made a thicker light blue batt with some mulberry silk.

I have no idea what I’ll be printing on any of these and have gathered a bunch of samples and other UFOs to experiment on.

Here is a failed coaster that had gold fabric felted in that I did a little free motion practice on.

A while back I had felted a bunch of samples from scarves.  I couldn’t find the post with the original scarves. One of them had dots which I wasn’t crazy about. I had done both sides and didn’t care for the inside either.  However, after felting the dots weren’t obvious, they looked more like flowers.  I made it into a little case and did a little embroidery on with with some silver floss for a little bling.

  The back:

The front has a little bit of black organic edging.

Nothing exciting this week, but I got to re-purpose a few things.

 

Connected Paths

Connected Paths

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I told you in another piece about an art show my guild is having to celebrate Canada’s 150th birthday . This is another piece I made for it. It is called connected.

As usual I started with  2 pieces of prefelt with a piece of cheese cloth in the middle for strength without bulk.

Then I added some multi coloured top I had. I didn’t want the path to be a solid colour.

I cut out prefelt pieces to make all the different houses. I tried to get houses from around the world. I didn’t place them in any particular order and every section got an apartment. I tacked all the pieces down using  felting needles. I didn’t want them to move.

Then bushes and trees were added.

I started this project back in December. I spend along time hand stitching ( and unpicking and redoiong) the windows and doors. I tried to use different yarns for every house and apartment. Then I signed up for Ruth’s free motion embroidery class.  I didn’t have much time to practice before I had to do the trees and bushes so it could go to be made ready for the guild show. The stitching is perhaps not the greatest but I think it goes well with the style of the picture.

 

I did get it in, in time and it has now been catalogued and properly photographed. The Guild art show celebrating Canada’s 150th birthday will be open on May 9, 2017 in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. Here’s a link to the invitation. https://www.facebook.com/events/282526522160719/?active_tab=about

Unfortunately Facebook will not let you create a 3 week event so it only shows as a 2 week event. The actual dates to see all 150 12×12 pieces ( many are for sale)   are May 9-28. We are having a reception on the last day so if you would like to meet some of the artists join us for refreshments on the 28th  between 1:00 and 3:00.

 

First Quarter Challenge Done.

First Quarter Challenge Done.

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It’s not even the last day of march and I have my First Quarter Challenge piece done. Here is the link to the challenge if you haven’t see it yet. https://feltingandfiberstudio.com/2016/12/31/2017-quarterly-challenges/

It took me a long time to figure out what I wanted to do. I didn’t want to remake an existing Fauvist painting. Then I remembered a couple of pictures I had when I was a child that had ballerinas in them. One was them dancing at night and one in a French garden. I doesn’t know where the pictures are now but what I remember is that they felt very happy. Fauvism should express emotion with simplified form and bold colour so that was the choice.

I did what I usually do for back grounds, a piece of cotton gauze between 2 pieces of prefelt. It measured about 14×14. Then I positioned my ballerinas. I used silk hanky pieces for the dresses.

I used prefelt, merino top and the large blue piece is a small left over piece of batt I made last year.  I then wet it all down and felted it down to 12×12. For an art piece this seems to be enough shrinkage. the size lets me use it for my guilds upcoming art show celebrate Canada’s 150th birthday. https://www.facebook.com/events/282526522160719/

Here it is after felting I think it qualifies as Fauvist.

It was ok but I wanted to emphasise the ballerinas more so I made their skirts 3D by needle felting some more silk hanky on to them.

I liked it before but I like it much better now.

 

I hope those of you that haven’t made anything yet will be inspired to so something before the end of the month. It was fun.

 

A busy week

A busy week

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I managed to get quite a bit of felting done this week. I made a cover for the handle of my teapot so I can stop burning my fingers.

Teapot 2 web teapot web teapot handle finnished It would have been better if the hole in the centre had been a little bigger but a few stitches and it was good to go.

I discovered my felt background for a picture I am making was in the dryer way to long and was completely felted. I guess I turned it onto a longer time than I thought.  Had to redo it.  Here is the redone one.

felt background

I also made the prefelts for the buildings.

prefelt

I got the wool laid out on the silk for a shawl. the first picture is the orange and yellow wool down but you can see some of the silk background. then I added several shades of purple. I think it looks like a sunset storm.

shawl orange and yellow down Shawl Purple added

And lastly on the felting front I worked on dryer balls. here they are ready to go in the washer.

Dryer balls

But most important thing this week my granddaughter was born. Here is Autumn, all 9 lbs 9 oz. of her.

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Combining Techniques and Materials

Combining Techniques and Materials

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I’ve been planning this picture for a while.  It’s not the first time I’ve combined techniques, but this time I wanted to add more dimension to the picture.

It may seem like an odd choice of subject, but my sister Lorraine has loved elephants all her life and this is a little thank you for the Trunk Show I had at her Quilt Club a few months back.

I started by dyeing some silk and wool, then making batts.  My original intent was to use the silk for texturing on the trunks, but the area was too small and since I wasn’t going to use it over all the elephants I let the idea go.

I built up the trunks, faces and foreground legs with coarser wool underneath, sewed them closed with wool thread and used resists under the ears.  The eyes are garnets.  I don’t know why the pics look brown, the prefelt was shades of gray.

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The base was made beforehand with Corriedale.  Before placing the elephants on I used batts for the water, sky, background and tree tops.  The light beige ground is hand dyed silk gauze.  I also used bits of Oussant fiber (from France) sent to me by forum member Aphee.  They are the brown and beige areas in the foreground.

Of course, I had to add a little silk to the water and sky.

The tree trunks are silk/merino mix.

Once the background was all laid out, I added the elephants and needlefelted them down.  This is before  felting and fulling.

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I did get some texture in the elephants, but the picture was a little flatter than I wanted so I added some needlefelting and fiber to the tree trunks and around the legs, hand embroidery on the toes and around the eyes, stitching and free motion stitching in the foreground grasses.  Also the Oussant flattened losing it’s springy texture so I needlefelted more of it to give better dimension.20150926_125059

The treetops in the background were purposely left vague to let the elephants have center stage.  More needlefelting and adding fiber for dimension and texture.

20151007_155604Some detail closeups.

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Final hanging on the wall.  I may have fulled it a little too much but I was worried about the thickness of the dimensional parts.

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I sure hope my sister likes it.

More Samples with Interesting Results

More Samples with Interesting Results

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We’ve been talking on the forum about how important it is to make samples, especially when using new fibers or unknown fabrics.  It’s better to take a little time to make a sample, than to waste a lot of time and fiber.

I still had one fiber from WOW I hadn’t tried.  It was actually a Jacob batt.  The batt was very uneven so I used two layers and still ended it up with a couple of sparse spots.  I only felted the samples to the prefelt stage so I could use them in another project.  The end result of the Jacob was it was very loose and spongy.  I’m tempted to full it to see what happens.  It is very similar to the Black Welsh I featured in a previous post.

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I recently did an experiment with one of Fiona Duthie’s 15 minute projects called Mountains.  It’s lost it’s bowl shape a little, but I really liked the curliness of the base, but couldn’t remember what fiber I used.

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I have been trying to use more of the coarse fibers I have.  But I have been terrible about remembering to write down what I’ve used.  I thought Icelandic was harder to felt.  It has a very long staple, dyes well, and whenever I use it in has to be shaved when finished. So, I decided to make a prefelt of this as well.

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What I discovered is it is soft at this stage, but felted easily.

So, have I been badmouthing the wrong fiber? I have a fair amount of Cheviot so I figured I would experiment with that as well.  The Cheviot had a shorter staple but the resulting prefelt was soft and a little lighter in color than the Icelandic which I thought was a lighter color. Hmmm.

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When I went with Cathy to the Wisconsin Sheep and Wool Festival, I purchased some Navajo Churro which I have never used.  It had a short staple and was coarse to the touch and filled with little knots.  The resulting prefelt was very hairy and much flatter than the others.  It reminded me of Gotland I had made a sample of a while back, but while they look similar, the Gotland was very smooth to the touch. It also had been fulled, so that may make a difference.  The Churro was very hairy.  I have some white Churro I will try dyeing later on.

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Last but not least, I made a Romney prefelt and found my curly fiber.  (its more noticable at the sparser edges. It is rougher to the touch but I like the cobweb wavy type look.  It also has a long staple.

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I had done similar samples using habatoi silk, mulberry silk fiber and yarns on each of them a while back, fulled, dyed and then stitched them together. Here is the Four Day Dye Experiment http://feltingandfiberstudio.com/2014/06/15/four-unintentional-days-of-dyeing/

These samples were fully felted and it is hard to tell the difference except to rub my hands over them. The Icelandic and Domestic 56 are coarser to the touch than the Cheviot and the Romney.  Different than at the prefelt stage.  I think in the future I may take a smaller sample to full and compare obviously they are different.

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Now as a preview to some more future sampling on a pile of fabric samples to test.

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What is your experience with sampling?

 

More Cup Cozies

More Cup Cozies

Comments 14 comments

This week I made more cup cozies. I made 2 sets of flat ones that will have buttons. I started out with a rectangle. I decorated them in a random way. I then cut them into 4 at the prefelt stage. The purple has some orange blobs of orange throwers waist. It should show up again when they are dry. The green has some of my hand spun single yarn. It is quite stable until you wet it then it get its twist back and goes all crazy.

purple cup cozies green cup cozies

I finish them on a glass wash board. It is very fast.

roling on washboard

These are the rest of the ones I made. They will get buttons. Some will fit a coffee mug and some will fit travel mugs or water bottles.

fan of cup cozies

Here are some of my buttons I will be picking through for these. I have many more if I need them. I will use a thin round black elastic loop to close them. That way I think people may be able to adjust them by looping them once or twice as needed.

buttons

I also made some that are like the cardboard sleeves you get at take out places.

tube cup cozie black with white silk white with black silk

The multicoloured one was made using a batt and prefelt triangles I cut out of some scraps. The black one is regular merino top with a white silk hanky stretched over it. The white one is made with prefelt and a black silk hanky stretched around it.  The white one shrank much more top to bottom then the other two. I didn’t look carefully at the piece I had before using it. Prefelt is directional. If I had looked I would have used it in the other direction.

rolling tube cup cozieI use the washboard to finish them as well.

This is the group drying. I really like the way the back and white ones look like marble.

finished tube cozies.

If you made it this far here are two unrelated pictures. One is my grandson helping me with my ice cream cone at the farmers market on Sunday.

icecream

And the turkeys I showed you  a few weeks ago. The first one is when they are 1 week old. They are now 4 .5 weeks old. They grow very fast. They will be moving to new quarters this week.

turkeysturkeys

 

Project Bags and Tea Cozies

Project Bags and Tea Cozies

Comments 26 comments

This last little while I have been making some project bags. I made a flat rectangular style using prefelt. I wrapped some prefelt around the resist. You can see I split the edges of the prefelt and cut one layer away so that the overlap would not be thicker than the rest of the bag.

overlaping prefelt ready to felt prefelt bag

Everything is prefelt except the stripes. They are an unknown wool roving I bought because I liked the colours. I put a stripe inside too so the bag will be reversible.  The finished pictures shows how you can use migration to your advantage. When I was about half way through fulling I cut a slit in each side for the handle. I healed the cut edges with some soap and finger rubbing. I stretched the hole upward to get the shape I wanted. I am pleased with how it turned out.

prefelt bag 1This side used dark green and white prefelt

prefelt bag 2This side used all black prefelt.

I also made 2 nice round bags with a built in strap. This pictues shows the bag with a balloon blown up inside it and the panty part of some panty hose stretch over it to hold it well while it is fulled to about the half way point. At that point it is nice and round and just needed to be shrunk more.

grenn bag on balloon

Once I was finished fulling it I rinsed it out and then blew another balloon up inside it to make sure it dried nice and round. I did a smaller blue one as well. Both were covered in one layer of silk hankie. The green one also had a silk hanky flower on it.

green bag dry blue bag dry

They need their closures. I haven’t decided what yet.

The other thing I made was a couple tea cozies. sorry for the picture quality but I couldn’t get it to show better despite trying several things on the camera and computer.

teacozies

The cat needs some whiskers. The flower is a made with a silk hankie.

 

 

Making Mini Birdhouses.

Making Mini Birdhouses.

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I got an order for some mine birdhouses for decorations.

I laid out 3 at a time, I get both sides ready then put the resist in.

mini birdhouse layout

Once they are wet I add the decorations

pink mini birdhouse redy to felt pink and green ready to felt

The green dots were cut out of a piece of homemade prefelt. The pink stripe is just a long strip of top.

Here I used a piece of felt that was cut off something else before I started the shrinking. I have I bin of off cuts. This one was quite thick so I spit it then cut it up for the decoration.

docorating minibird house blue decorations

Here is a shot after felting. It shows the size and the shrinkage. The picture on the right  is  with a balloon in so it will dry in the right shape.

mini birdhouse size min birdhouse with balloon

They are getting there strings right now. If I can get them done and get a pictures of them I will edit it in. Otherwise you will have to wait for my next blog post.

 

 

 

Sewing and Bargains

Sewing and Bargains

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I’m doing another Craft Fair at the beginning of November so I wanted to make a few diary covers. This usually involves my desk getting covered with embroidery threads, and the only exception this time was that I decided to tidy them up too. I made cardboard ‘bobbins’ for some of them and spent ages untangling and winding and then putting duplicate spares in a bag. Then a couple of days later I decided to clear some more drawers and spread the threads out a bit, make them even tidier and easy to choose. These are all the drawers:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAOne of the pieces I’m using for a book cover is a piece I made years ago. I wanted to see if I could make a subtle plaid design by laying out bold stripes of colours on my two layers, it was more subtle than I thought, but I like it. I’ve cut to size and sewn the inside pocket edges so far:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAYou might remember this next piece from when I tried some commercial pre-felt from Heidi Feathers. The silk hadn’t attached in a couple of places so I added blanket stitch, then decided to add some more simple stitching in the blocks of colour. I’m still working on this, and have added a bit more since I took the photo:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAI went in to the city centre this week, which I don’t often do, so made the most of it looking for bargains. I found a couple of elasticated summer dresses for £1 each so got them because I liked the pattern, they were only tiny though, so once I cut the top off, the bottom was a bit bigger than a pillow case, but well worth £1!

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAIn the same shop I treated myself to a ‘scarf’ because I liked the pattern, it’s actually the size of a door!

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAI saw this scarf in a bargain shop and thought I’d see if it nuno felts well:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAAnd, I couldn’t go to town without a trip to Abakhan fabric shop, where I got some more braiding (I took a photo of the back for you, Ann!)

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAAnd probably the best bargain of the day, I found a roll of silk fabric, down from £10 a metre to £3, so I had to get some 🙂

silk 2