A few weeks ago, I taught a felted vessel class. A lovely bunch of ladies full of enthusiasm. As usual, I didn’t take as many pictures as I wanted, but here you can see the setup.
After everyone had their base ready, people got to work on embellishments. This is the hardest part, but also the most fun for most people. So many choices of wool and silk. They have to think about where they will cut their felt to take the resist out, to open it up, how big they want the opening and whether they want a very round pot or a flattish one. Where is the top, and where is the bottom?
I didn’t take as many pictures as I wanted to, so we jump to the end.
Two ladies decided to cut slits and make their vessels into small bags. They need to work on the edges some more.
And one lady decided to turn hers into two small bowls. One was turned inside out so you can see the pattern better.
All in all, I think they did very well having never felted before, I don’t think any of them had ever handled fibre before.
My wonderful local arts centre (The Horsebridge Community Arts Centre in Whitstable) has an art bank. People donate all sorts of lovely (and sometimes slightly odd) materials. Anyone can visit the art bank room, select things they’d like, then pay what they can.
I often have joint exhibitions in the arts centre’s galleries and do some volunteering for them too (mostly bar work). They work very hard to raise funds to keep the centre going and supporting the community. I live nearby so frequently pop into the art bank to see what’s there, and I sometimes walk away with a little challenge for myself. I’m going to talk today about felt testing two materials that are new to me: silk carrier rods and fine metal mesh.
A few months ago, I was unable to resist some beautifully dyed silk carrier rods. I enjoyed separating and sorting them; they reminded me of fish.
They got bagged up and filed in the ‘to do sometime’ section of my brain.
A couple of weeks ago, their time had come. If you’re not familiar with silk carrier rods, they’re a waste product of silk production. When silk is removed from silk cocoons, it is reeled onto a machine. Some of the silk thread and gum gets caught on the winding rods and has to be cut away. They resultant silk carrier ‘rods’ are quite thick and stiff with sericin gum. You can peel each one into layers. You can also stretch them length-ways to thin them out, but they don’t have any appreciable movement across the width of the rod. I suppose it’s because that’s the direction the individual silk threads lie and silk thread is strong.
I checked the internet for felting with silk carrier rods and although there were some images, it wasn’t clear to me how thin the rods that had successfully been felted were. I’d peeled mine as much as I was able but I didn’t want to stretch them out too far along the length as I wanted to keep as much of the shine and colour of the silk as possible.
I’d like to felt a school of fish shooting up through the ocean so decided I’d better make a small test picture to see how the carrier rods felted.
I selected a lovely red / yellow / green rod layer and trimmed it slightly to create a fish shape.
Here it is with a non-trimmed layer for comparison
I laid out 2 layers of merino to look sort of ‘watery’, placed the trimmed shape more or less in the middle and popped on a small eye using tiny bits of wet & rolled dark grey and white wool.
The felting went pretty well, though I started to worry that they eye wouldn’t attach so gave it a few stabs with a felting needle before I started the fulling.
Here it is after felting, still wet, with the other piece of silk for comparison.
You can see it has shrunk a lot along the length but only a small amount across the width, which is what I’d expected
And here it is dry.
So, what did I learn from my sample?
I’d soaked the silk briefly in water before I used it to see if it was dye-fast. It was. I also thought the water might soften it a bit, though I don’t actually know if this made any difference as I didn’t try felting with an un-soaked piece (good job I’m not a scientist).
I deliberately only pulled it out a little lengthways so I was running the risk of it not felting in well. I also didn’t trap the silk with fine wool fibres: the idea was to try it and adapt if necessary for a future picture. The fish is fairly secure – I couldn’t easily pull it off – but I’d say it’s not fully integrated in the felt. There’s some movement if you rub it, especially in the central body section. It feels like it’s partially sitting on the surface. The tail is the most integrated part; I probably pulled that bit out the furthest.
It’s probably OK for a picture but I wouldn’t want to subject it to a lot of wear and tear. Ideally it should be felted in more firmly.
Things to consider for a future picture.
Soak for longer
Stretch out more
Add some fine strands of wool to trap it across the fish
Scuff up the under-side slightly
Put some light clouds of wool in similar colours to fish behind it (poss in addition to scuffing up the back)
Trap it with wool strands round the edges
I may not do all of these but would probably do some and almost certainly stretch it out more.
I’m also not keen on the eye: it’s a bit cartoonish & feels like it should be slightly higher up on its head. Maybe next time I will bead the eye on at the end, or use grey wool instead of white. I’m not sure if I will ever make the school of fish, but I’m satisfied that the sample did its job.
My second test piece is a very small one. I recently saw in the art bank some tubes of fine metal mesh and, as I often do, wondered if I could felt them.
The mesh is in different coloured tubular strips: I think they are intended for jewellery making. You could put some beads inside the mesh tubes and place other, perhaps smaller, beads between them, on the outside of the mesh.
I like the idea of having the mesh on the outside of some felt, perhaps to make a seed head. You can see the mesh can be stretched out.
Again, a sample seemed like a good idea. I made it quite small, just to see if and how it felted. I didn’t want to waste too much.
I cut a small square each of merino prefelt and metal mesh, approximately 6 x 6 cm (or 2.36 inches)
Although it doesn’t look like it in this photo, the mesh is light blue.
And here it is when felted & dry.
Conclusions? It felted very securely: the metal mesh is well embedded into the felt. I managed to get 1/3 shrinkage. I tried for a while but it just wouldn’t shrink more. Perhaps I need a larger sample to test this. The mesh didn’t give the felt as much additional structure as I’d expected. It does fold into a slight crease and it bends a little to hold a curve. Again, I think I’d need a bigger sample to test these properly. On the other hand, it looks pretty and is quite sparkly. Perhaps even a bit like fish scales?
For now I’m parking this experiment too. One day I’ll think of a really good use for it.
I do wander around thinking about what would happen if I tried to felt different materials. It’s always pleasing to have a go and make a little sample. It doesn’t always behave as I expect – which is exactly the point of a sample – but the results get stored away in my imagination for the next time I need exactly that effect.
Let me know in the comments if you’ve tried felting with a new or unusual material and what happened.
Our local group meeting in November was all about painting fabric. We are still working on background fabrics that will be included in our fabric books. We used a variety of “fabric” paints that are heat set.
Louise had cut up a bunch of different types of fabric to paint on and had a wide arrary of paints.
The idea was to spray water on to the fabric, then add paint and then you could if you wanted, add another piece of fabric on top to pick up extra paint. The photos above show a piece of sheer fabric that was painted, then a piece of cotton velveteen was added on top. The final photo on the right shows the velveteen after all the paint colors were added. This is Sally’s fabric.
Paula was working in shades of brown. These fabrics are all still wet, so it will be interesting to see what they look like dry.
I was working in fall colors. When you see the black printing, those are fabrics that we screen printed years ago that Louise still had in her stash.
These are a few of Louise’s painted pieces.
And one more photo of one of Sally’s painted fabrics. We left the fabric at Louise’s house to dry and then everything will need to be ironed. Next month, we have plans to do some fabric weaving for a book page.
Do you feel like the days, weeks and months just keep getting away from you? No matter how hard you work, paddling faster and faster, the to-do list never gets any shorter? It has been 6 weeks since Felters Convergence, I was hoping for a quiet spell before the Christmas rush but it feels like it has been another insanely busy period. When I stop and think, “What have I done / achieved?” I’m at a loss…. I can’t remember!
Thank heavens for the camera roll in our mobile phones!
Early October saw my first ever pit firing with the Manurewa Potters, it was a lot of fun, with a shared lunch but, for me, the results were a little disappointing. I love colour and contrast and this style of firing produces more muted, subtle tones. It’s probably not a branch of pottery for me but I’m glad I got to try it.
These were my pots, the red / orange rings around the top were from underglazes I painted on before firing, the browns, greys and blacks were from the materials added to the fire. I have started waxing the one on the right, which has intensified some of the colours and it’s growing on me but the one on the left I think will be re-fired with some more traditional glazes.
In mid October I hosted my first Open Studio event in New Zealand, as part of the Franklin Arts Trail (which gets unflatteringly abbreviated to FAT). It was a huge success, I met so many fascinating people, introduced some of them to felt-making and even sold a few of my finished pieces, so now I have space to make more!
This photo was taken during the reorganising / scurryfunging, I’m sorry to say I forgot to take any photos during the event. Can you spot the ever-helpful cat (Aoife)?
A few felty friends and I had a play date just before Halloween where we made felted eyeballs using a variety of different techniques (felting around glass marbles, polystyrene balls and making solid wool balls).
Halloween weekend was spent with the lovely Waikato Creative Fibre group at a wonderful 3-day fibre retreat. I even managed to get some spinning done in between teaching a couple of short felting classes and taking a mosaic crochet class.
Fingers crossed I now have enough yarn to finish making a sleeveless top with a tulip hem:
Auckland is starting to feel much more summery and the weeds in my veg patch agree, they were definitely winning…
But after 6 days of hard graft and 1 broken garden fork later I was delighted to find half a dozen leeks, some potatoes and a couple of onions ready to harvest and I no longer cringe at the state of this part of the garden:
I contacted Spear and Jackson about the fork because it had a “10 year warranty” sticker not really holding out much hope that they would replace it but amazingly the replacement has just arrived, all the way from the UK, less than 2 weeks after I emailed them! Now that’s good service 🙂
A few months ago Auckland Felters applied to hold a group exhibition at Nathan Homestead, an historic building that has just completed a year-long renovation, and we were successful – YAY!
The exhibition doesn’t open until next March but deadline for the marketing materials was last week so there has been a lot of frantic activity as we formulated a plan for a felting workshop and market day. The date of our workshop falls on 25th April, ANZAC day (the antipodean equivalent of Remembrance day) so we thought a field of felted poppies would be a fitting project.
With only a few hours before the deadline I found myself hastily felting a sample for the brochure. The result is ok but not my best work. If I can find a spare 30 min I would like to fix the central flower with some needle-felting and add some more highlights and shading.
My local craft / gift shop, Clevedon Creatives + Co, have started stocking some of my work so there has been quite of lot of trips back and forth to get it set up. Now my studio looks even more empty than it did after FAT but I am pleased to have a wider audience for my work.
The Christmas season has already started here with my first artisan craft fair last weekend. This market, at the Franklin Arts Centre in Pukekohe, was a very successful start to the season, fingers crossed this is a good omen for the next few weeks after 2025 started with a bit of an economic whimper.
The felted soaps are eternally popular at my local craft markets so I have been furiously making these most evenings for the last few weeks:
There has been quite a lot of dyeing going on too, mostly silk hankies and silk top as I try to keep up with demand. These plaits will be added to my Etsy shop over the next few days.
Finally a bit of felting fun, a new journal cover. When I started laying out the wool for this I was planning to cover it with yarn in a grid pattern but just as I was about to start laying out the yarns it screamed, “WATER!”. So I rummaged in my bag of prefelt scraps and found some space-dyed orange and yellow pieces. Perfect for fish! A couple of white silk hankies to emulate splashing water / surf et voila!
I’m so glad I ditched the yarn, the jumping, playful fish are much more fun! I can’t help but smile when I see them 🙂
Phew! No wonder the last few weeks have felt busy 🙂 Why couldn’t I remember any of that without my phone…?
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.
I have been out of town and didn’t have time to write a new post. So I thought I would share a post from my personal blog that is a flour paste tutorial. I apologize for the quality of the photos. I wrote this post in 2011 and my photo taking was not really very good at that point in my life.
Put plastic over your surface on which you will be working. This is very messy so lots of plastic, much wider than your fabric. Pin the top edge of the fabric. You can see it in this photo but I have pinned the edge that is closest to the bucket of flour paste. Mix 1 cup cold water and 1 cup flour in a tub. Use cold water as to make the paste a better consistency. For this silk scarf, I used two recipes of flour paste. I forgot to take a photo before I put flour paste on but you get the idea.
I just pour the paste straight out of the container on to the fabric. Pour along the top edge where you pinned the fabric down. It takes quite a bit so pour generously (more than this photo).
Then use a squeegee or some flat tool to scrape a layer of flour paste over the entire piece of fabric. This process stretches the fabric and is why you only pin the top edge.
Here’s better photo of a generous pour of flour paste.
Once you have your entire surface covered with flour paste, pin the bottom edge and ends of fabric. Make sure you have covered all your edges well. I have this on my “new” print table that I made by stapling a large piece of black felt to the table. Therefore, I can pin right through the plastic and into the felt
If your table is too low, just add four pieces of PVC pipe. Works a charm to prevent your back from bothering when working.
Then let the piece dry for at least 24 hours. I had the fan going on this and it only took 12 hours to dry. It should all be the same color with no translucent looking spots when it is dry. If you look closely, you can see that almost all the pins have been pulled up due to shrinkage. If you don’t pin it down, the entire piece will curl up and be a big mess. Ask me how I know!!
This is how stiff it is when the flour paste is dry. This is an 8mm silk scarf – now turned into a flour paste plank
Here I am holding the end of the scarf. If you haven’t tried this technique, it seems really bizarre.
Next, you need to crack the flour paste. The more you bend, roll or push on the fabric, the more cracking you will get.
These are just a few photos showing the cracked flour paste.
Then you can either use fabric paint or thickened dye. I used Jacquard Textile paint mixed with half water and half paint. Paint over the entire surface making sure that your paint is covering all the flour paste resist.
Here’s a peak on the back after painting. This is about how it will look when you wash it out. If that isn’t enough crackling, carefully (you’ll get paint all over yourself) crack it some more and add more paint. Let paint dry for 24 hours. Most textile paints are supposed to be heat set but it doesn’t work to iron this mess. You could try it on the back but both times I’ve tried it, the paint was pretty well set after 24 hours dry time. If you’re using dye, batch like you normally do.
Then fill a bucket with cold water. You don’t want to put the water directly in the sink because you won’t want this flour paste/paint gunk going down your sink. I just rolled the scarf up into a roll and dunked it in the water. It starts loosening almost immediately and you can peel it right off. Just let the gunk settle to the bottom of the bucket.
Can you see the black stuff peeling off in pieces?
Here’s what it looks like.
Once you’ve got as much gunk off as possible, wash with mild detergent in the washing machine. Then iron and you’ll have a lovely crackled effect. I just love the look of these. I have to try some more with different colored paint. Don’t forget to pour the water and flour paste gunk outside. Do not pour it down your sink unless you have a crush on your plumber!
Here’s a few close ups. Can you see the discharged ammonite?
Here’s another look.
I get carried away.
Because I really like this effect. I certainly did not come up with this idea and I got all instructions from Jane Dunnewold’s latest book (this post was written in 2011). If you give it a try, let me know and show us some photos. If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to ask.
I decided to make a sample before plunging into making a seat cushion. I decided this for 2 reasons. First, I am not sure where most of the batts are hiding, so I only had a small batt handy. Second, I needed to do some quick felting for the blog today. The sample fit the bill perfectly.
This is a Swiss Mountain batt. I got it off Etsy a few years ago.
I decided 10 inches by 10 inches is a good size for a sample and makes shrinkage easy to calculate. Please excuse my dirty-looking table; it’s some sort of glue that won’t come off.
The edges a thin, so I folded them down to make it square.
I added a layer going up and down.
Once it was wet down, I folded the thin edge top and bottom to square it to 10 inches. That would have been enough to make a sample, but it would also be very boring.
I got out some balls of my handspun and made a spiral. Who doesn’t like a spiral?
I spent longer than normal rubbing so the yarn would stick without moving too much. My impatience usually results in wobbly lines.
Then, of course, lots of rolling to full it properly.
The finished sample ended up just about 7 by 7 inches
It ended up fairly sturdy. The spiral ended up holding its shape very well. However, it is quite hairy and I think it would be a bit prickly to sit on with thin pants or a dress. Once it is dry, I will try shaving it, but I don’t think it will work. There will still be short, strong fibres on the surface. I may have to try some Blue-faced Leicester or maybe some Corriedale. What’s your favourite strong wool for sturdy applications?
Last time, at the end of my post, I said my next project needs to be a seat cushion. I have a plastic roller chair for my studio. It is pretty comfortable as these chairs go. However, after spending a long time in it, taking pictures for the book resist workshop, I decided it needs some padding.
I thought about just felting a thick piece of felt, but I don’t think it is that easy to get really thick felt. But what about 2 flat pieces? Then sew it together with some wool stuffed between. That would mean I have to find the one bobbin I have for my sewing machine ( after uncovering the machine). Then I thought, just do it over a resist. Then it’s twice as thick, and I can still stuff it with some wool. I would need to wash some wool for stuffing, but I could do that.
I think the resist is the best one. Have you made felt seat pads or cushions?
I can calculate shrinkage easily enough. I know it means I have to make a sample. I am always advising others to make samples; I guess I should listen to myself and not skip it. I have some Swiss Mountain Sheep batts that should work well for a cushion.
I need to design a picture or motif for the top of the cushion, or maybe both sides. I don’t want a boring cushion. I am thinking that on one side, I could use the wet wool outline technique I learned from Ildie here on the blog/ I could probably do my farm logo. Here is one of Ildie’s posts https://feltingandfiberstudio.com/2022/08/22/modern-art-wallhanging/. I did a mirror cover for my car in this style.
After shaving
My logo and farm name are not that exciting, so I will need to do something more interesting on the other side.
Maybe a mountain scene on the other side? But in real or bold colours, subtle or bold lines. I can’t make up my mind.
Maybe a bigger version of this Monet-inspired fish pond I did.
I have been working on the online Book Resist workshop. I have all the pictures taken and edited. I added them to the instructions, and now I need to fiddle with the layout. I do have someone taking a look at it to find the glaring mistakes. After a while, it sort of all blurs together. In-person workshops are so much easier. I had planned the workshop as a 3-part workshop. Each part is self-contained, so I will do the first part as a workshop this fall and get the other two parts done for the spring, and then expand it.
I am supposed to have the summer off. So far, I don’t seem to have stopped running. So I have nothing new to tell you about. So I am going to share this with you again. I hope you enjoy it again if you have already seen it. I am at a Demo today. I plan to take lots of pictures and blog about it on July 23. It sounds so far away, but I am sure it will be here the day after tomorrow.
I have been wanting to make a cat cave for some time now. I decided it needed to be bright. I picked some Blue Faced Leicester wool so it would be strong and dyed it chartreuse. Then I picked some purple and magenta for the spikes.
Spikes and Wool
I wanted an oval cat cave. I used my oval hat form to get the shape and gradually sized it up.
Drawing the Resist
I laid out 4 layers of wool for strength and even shrinkage. I put the first side aside, and after laying out the second side, I poked holes to put the spikes through.
Spikes in the Wool
After wetting it all down, I wrapped each spike in plastic wrap so it would not get felted down flat.
Spikes all Wrapped Up
I covered it with a sheer curtain and rubbed both sides for a while and rolled it for a while, and then wrapped it up, put it in the dryer twice, changing the position of the felt each time. It was starting to shrink, so I cut out the resist and switched to rolling it in a stick blind. I find the stick blinds to be very aggressive and shrinks the felt quickly. I did do some throwing, too. Finally, I rinsed the cave out in a bucket of alternately hot and cold water, being quite aggressive with it. I then had to stretch the top so it would be domed. I steamed it to heat it and make it easier to stretch. Mostly, I used a wooden spoon to push in a sliding motion to get the shape. Here it is on top of the resist, so you can see how much it shrank.
Finished Cave on top of the Resist
Here it is in use; it didn’t take long for one of my cats, Wu, to take up residence.
Cat in Cave
As a footnote, Wu (the queen of all things) is no longer with us. This is one of my favourite pictures of her. She really liked the cave; we buried her in it, here on the farm.
