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Category: Wet Felting

Prefelt and Structure

Prefelt and Structure

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If you have been following my experiments lately, I have been trying felt rope as a base for structure. I had a request to try the same experiment with prefelt to see if there was any difference between the two.

I made  a piece of prefelt and cut it into strips with a rotary cutter. I decided to use two strips to give the same weight as the felt rope in my prior experiment. I also covered the same resist with two layers of wool laid perpendicular to the length of the resist.

I used two strips of prefelt and wrapped around the resist. These were stitched in place with yellow 30 weight machine thread. It was easier to stitch the prefelt than the felt rope.

I then covered this with two more layers of wool over the prefelt strips wrapped in the same direction as the first layer. The photos above show the piece after I removed the resist and the photo on the right is a closer look at one of the prefelt strip areas. It definitely shrank differently than the felt rope. The rope got very wavy under the felt.

And here it is after fulling and shaping. The only different thing that I did this time was to continue to stretch the prefelt areas into circular shapes as I was fulling. I think that helped to smooth out the circles compared to my last try.

And here are the two together. The one on the left is made with felt rope and the one on the right is with prefelt. Essentially the same thing. As you can see, the rope is a bit wavier but that might have been avoided if I have stretched it more during fulling. The thing I like about this experiment is that the prefelt works just as well as the rope and for me, it’s much easier to make. So I think my experiments with felt rope are over. 😉

Felt Rope and Structure Part Three

Felt Rope and Structure Part Three

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I have been continuing my experiments with felt rope and structure so here we are at part three. (Part One and Part Two, if you missed them.) I had gotten so many different suggestions that I wanted to try out a different method. This involved stitching the felt rope to prefelt so it would stay in place.

Luckily, I found some already made felt rope so I didn’t have to spend time making it. But, it wasn’t long enough to spiral around the resist but I had three pieces that would work. My resist is bigger than the last one where I made the felt “pickle”. It’s about 8″ x 15″ (20 x 38 cm). I covered the resist with two very thin layers of wool and laid all the wool perpendicular to the long side of the resist. This is the opposite direction to what I used on the the felt “pickle”. I then wet down and felted the piece to prefelt.

Here it is. If you look carefully, you will see a few holes. But I decided not to worry about it since I was adding a second layer of wool over this one. I put the felt outside and it dried in just  a few minutes. It is 96 degrees F (35+ C) here today.

Now to stitch the felt rope to the prefelt. I used a matching color machine weight thread and hand stitched the ropes in place. You can see them stitched on in the right hand photo. I stitched the ends of the rope together so it would be a continuous circle around the wool.

Now to add more wool over the top of the stitched ropes. I kept the wool running in the same direction as the first layer of wool and covered with another couple of thin layers of wool. Then to start rubbing and getting everything to hold together. I did appreciate that the ropes were held in place well and didn’t shift or move during the felting process.

Here’s the piece after felting and beginning to full. The resist is still inside at the moment. I just snipped off one end to pull the resist out.

Next up was fulling. Here is the piece after I finished fulling. The felt rope got really wavy and wasn’t staying firm enough to hold a circle. I’m not sure why but I completely forgot to stretch the felt rope as I was going along so it would stay more circular. But then I had an “Aha” moment or a “Duh” moment (whichever way you like to think about it) and I thought I would try and stretch out the rope so it would dry more round.

Here’s my felt yard art on a stick. The rope didn’t stretch out completely but it is circular enough for me. Another fun experiment completed and the stitching worked perfectly to keep the rope in place while felting. I just need to shave off the fuzzies once this has dried. What should I experiment with next? Any good ideas?

Felt Basket #3

Felt Basket #3

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Yes, I made another felt basket. this one is with some Bergschaf Tyrollean wool I got from Lituania when it was on sale and had free shipping to boot. I don’t know if its the same as the Bergschef that DHG sells.  https://www.etsy.com/ca/listing/532965567/one-of-the-best-wool-for-wet-felting?ref=shop_home_active_7&frs=1&crt=1

I used a little over 300 grams.

I repaired the resist from the last basket with some sheep duct tape.

The wool was in a bat as you can see. I  am not used to working with them. But even with splitting it and fiddling to make it all even, it was faster to lay out.

 

I rubbed a bit and then rolled it as usual until it was shrinking then cut it out and cut the handle. I didn’t realize how much it had shrunk until I pulled out the resist. this blue foam is much softer than the white I get and you don’t feel it bunching up the same way.

I have a washboard for rolling on but this was t wide for it. I have a great car floor mat that works great. it has a great texture. I wrap the piece in some plastic to protect the surface while I roll.

I also beat the basket into a nice round shape after blowing up a 24-inch beach ball inside it. Beating it with a pool noodle worked great.

I popped it outside to be another alien.

When it was dry I decided it had not been fulled enough. I wet it down and put it in the dryer with some bumpy balls. It shrank some more.

I dried it on a 20-inch beach ball this time. It is nice and sturdy now.

Not great pictures but it is thundering and we are about to get a downpour so I had to be quick about snapping a couple of pictures.

the handle is quite straight across when I roll it up. I think I may have to steam it and let it cool in a rounder shape.  Also, it is quite hairy. part of that may be the fulling with the bumpy balls. Tennis balls would have been a better choice, I think.

Anyway, I like it but the next step will be to try doing what they do for felt carpets in the middle east. use a blow torch to burn off the fuzziness. I was hoping to have pictures of that for you today but I have run out of time. so hopefully next week you will have some pictures of me trying that.  Anyone else ever tried to burn off the fuzzies?

Felt Rope and Structure Part Two or How To Wet Felt A Dill Pickle

Felt Rope and Structure Part Two or How To Wet Felt A Dill Pickle

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I showed you my first failed experiment with a felt rope and using it for structure. I got loads of good ideas on how to improve the experiment and took those suggestions and came up with a plan.

First off, I decided to work around a flat resist and use the same kind of wool for the felt rope as the rest of the surface. So I used mixed 56’s that I hand dye. I dry felted a felt rope from the yellow wool. I didn’t add any water at all but just rolled it dry until it was holding together. It wasn’t firm at all. I left the ends loose so that I could make sure the rope was well attached.

I covered the resist with light green wool with a couple of thin layers all running lengthwise to the resist.

I then wrapped the felt rope around the wool covered resist and added a couple more thin layers of wool in the light green. I added a bit of darker green to the ends.

And then I rubbed and felted and began fulling before removing the resist. Here it is after I took the resist out.

And then I fulled it into submission. You can see how much shrinkage there was in comparison to the resist. It is very hard and certainly won’t lose it’s shape.

And here it is after I shaved the surface a bit. It could use a bit more shaving but I haven’t had time to let it dry yet. So once it’s dry, I will shave it again. To me, it looks like a dill pickle or perhaps a small minnow? It is much more in line with what I was thinking when I first tried the experiment. I will have to try it on a larger scale. I’m not sure that the felt rope adds any advantage over prefelt cut in a strip. Perhaps if I have gotten the rope a bit harder, it might have effected the shape more. Next time, I think I will lay the resist wool going around the short side of the resist instead of lengthwise. I would also use less wool on the ends of the rope or just use a cut strip of prefelt.

 

 

3rd Quarter Challenge and Summer Poker Challenge in One.

3rd Quarter Challenge and Summer Poker Challenge in One.

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My guild does a summer poker challenge every summer. first, you pick weaving or spinning or new this year felting. You pick 3 cards from a deck of cards to find out your challenge for the summer. The idea is to get you to try something you wouldn’t usually do.  I picked my card in June. I got blue, cotton and metallic.  Then Lyn and Annie announced the 3rd quarter challenge of a personal item to keep you warm. There is more about the challenge here:

2020 Third Quarter Challenge

The first thing I did was dye some open-weave cotton I had.  You can read more about that here in this blog post I did:

Cotton dyed and some new fibre.

All the pictures will open larger if you click on them.

My plan is to make a lightweight poncho for cool evenings. This requires a big layout. the start is 4feet by 4feet. I put the first layer of cotton down and decided to use thin plastic for the resist so it would roll up easily. I don’t need to feel the edge of the resist like you do making a hat.

I added the second piece of cotton and sewed around the edge using big basting stitches.

Then I took it all out and overlapped the edges and sewed it up again. The edge will be visible on the inside and I didn’t want the seam sticking out.

All sewn together

Next, I added a very thin and not perfectly neat, layer of medium blue. I want the cotton to show through. Then started adding the embellishments. Sorry about the pictures not being great but I am holding my phone as high up as I can, trying to get an overall shot.

This one is a bit better. Mostly the embellishments are wool in different colours.  I added the metallic threads to take care of that part of the poker challenge but didn’t get a good picture.

These are the 2 sparkly nylons I used for the metallic part of the challenge; bronze and steel. I only used a little. I don’t want to sparkle very much.

Next is wet it all down, and start felting- rubbing and rolling.

When it was starting to shrink I opened one corner to be the hole for the head and opened the bottom 2 sides.

Here it is finished.

And the cotton sides

Here are some closeups

The cotton side

The wool side

And the metallic bitts, they don’t shrink so they get wiggly.

I am very happy with the result. The wool separated out and let the cotton show through. It has a nice light feel and I think it invokes the feel of moving water or ripples on a pond. It should work well for cool nights.

Bubble Texture

Bubble Texture

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My best-laid plans have gone awry, so I am going to show you a short piece I did back in 2012. Texture seems to be a popular topic so this should fit right in. Although this is an older post if you want to comment or ask about it you can.

People seem to be interested in how to make bubbles in felt. I know there is more than one way but this is how I did it. This is the storey of my bubble hat. I had made a renaissance hat form Chad Alice Hagen’s hat book. I t was to show a group of ladies that were taking a hat class with me. It is a big hat made on a resist that is shaped like a big droopy mushroom. When you finish it you make wrinkles in it and clothespin them till it dries. The problem is it looks great if you push it all forward and take a picture but from the back, it doesn’t look very good. I am sorry I don’t have a picture of it at that point.

What I did was use a shibori dying technique. I used felt balls but marbles or crumple tinfoil will work the same. I started in the middle. You pull the felt around the ball and tie it off as tight as you can. Move out from there repeating the wrap and tie. When it was all done I dropped it in a simmering dye bath. I let it boil for about an hour. When using this as a dye technique it is usually done on a non-felting fabric so you open it up later and flatten it out you have a die pattern. When you do it to felt at a boil it felts more and the bubble shapes stay in. Making bubbles takes a lot of felt. The hat would fit my dog now. If you put your hands in like a puppet it makes s great Muppet monster.

Experimenting with Felt Rope and Structure

Experimenting with Felt Rope and Structure

Comments 17 comments

I thought I would move on in my experimentation with creating structure in felt and differential shrinkage, this time using a felt rope. I’m not sure why I thought this was a good idea but I suddenly remembered why I don’t make many felt ropes.

I used a batt of yellow short fiber merino and tore it into a strip. I then worked a bit on trying to dry roll it to get some of the air out. But that wasn’t working too well so I added soap and water. The rope turned out OK but is far from perfect. I always forget how much patience these take to do them correctly. Now that the rope was done, how to add the felt to this spiral structure?

I came up with the idea of covering a PVC pipe with lime green mixed 56’s wool. I probably should have used merino but this is what I had grabbed for this project. I covered the pipe with wool and then wet it down.

I wrapped the rope around the wool covered PVC pipe and then began adding wisps of wool over the rope. I wet it down as I went to hold everything in place. I then spent a fair amount of time rubbing and working around the rope so that the wisps would stay in place and hold the rope down to the felt. Apparently, not enough.

Here it is after felting. What a mess. The ends of the rope were coming loose and it looked like my dog Edgar had been chewing on it. (Not really because he would have torn it to shreds in a matter of seconds.)

I took a break and then decided I need to full it much harder. I found a thinner stick to put in the middle and worked the piece with soapy hands as well as rolling it on the ridged mat and banging it hard against the table.

Here is the end result. Not appealing or impressive. But I might try again with a much thicker inner and outer layer of wool.  I also will probably try wrapping the rope around a flat resist instead of a 3D object. I can always full around the pipe or dowel rod after the felt is holding the rope together better. Not totally a disaster but close! I do think it’s good to go ahead and post about something that doesn’t work out as planned. Perhaps someone else will learn something from my trial and error experimentation. And perhaps you can empathize with me that not all projects are beautiful or perfect. What have you experimented with lately?

Final Bark Color Mixing Experiment

Final Bark Color Mixing Experiment

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I tried one last experiment with creating bark and color mixing. I showed you last week my attempt with color mixing with a drum carder. And there was another experiments here.  I had part of the mixed batt left over from last week so I decided to combine all of my techniques and see what happened.

First I split my batt in two layers. You can see the felted piece from last week on the right. I then added two layers of green wool over the surface of the bottom batt.

Then I cut up the felt piece from last week and placed it over the green wool. I wanted more green migrating through between the felt pieces.

Then I added the other layer of batt over top of the felt pieces. With everything layered up, I was ready to wet down.

I wet it down and then did a lot of rubbing. I worked carefully between the thick felt pieces in the center of the sandwich so that they would stay in place and there would be a nice indentation between. I also fulled the felt very hard to get lots of green migrating through the top surface.

And here is the finished piece of bark. (Edgar is helping me take photos.) Finally, this is the look that I wanted when I started this experimentation. It has a wonderful texture and the color mixing is what I envisioned. So a combination of carded batt and layered colors with thick felt in between did the trick. Yay! I will have to decide if I am going to add any stitching or other embellishments to this piece or just leave it as is. What do you think?

Basket Mark 2 Finished.

Basket Mark 2 Finished.

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This week I finished the basket. All it really needed was to have the handle finished and that would have been fast and easy. But a white basket is not only boring it does not fit with me. I can’t keep anything white clean for long.

So faze to of the basket: dying.

I have a turkey fryer/corn cooker for dying outside. After clearing a spot on the porch for the dye pot and my son cleaning all the bugs and spiders and webs out of the hose and burner I got some water heating. Usually, when you are going to dye wool you wet it first. it gets you a more even take-up of the dye. I didn’t want that in particular so I popped it in dry.

you can see I only put it in partway. Ther is about half the bottom of the basket sticking out. This is limy green. after it had cooked for about 45 min just under a boil the water was clear and I removed it and added a dye from ProChem called Mallard. It’s a blue-green and put the basket into the pot the other way up. I forgot to take a picture of that, sorry.

Once the dye was exhausted I rinsed it and blew the beach ball up in it again, another alien.  I am really pleased with the way the colours came out.

Since I had the dye pot hot I dyed some wool too.

My original idea was to use a piece of a tree branch in the handle.

It was ok when I was holding it but as soon as I put it down this happened.

It dropped right to the bottom. So much for the cream buns you just bought. It is much too heavy. Looking back at the pictures I had seen with wood in the handles, they were all small and the wood was mostly driftwood, which is much lighter. Those baskets seemed to be more decorative than useful.  I went back to just rolling all the excess wool up into the handle. It makes a nice sized comfortable to hold handle.  You can see the colour mixing better now its dry.

when I let go of the handle It still falls to the side but not nearly as much, so the cream buns are safe.

You may have noticed that one side of the basket stretched out more than the other. I think it was from the ball being blown up in it. I should have rewet it and fulled it some more but I didn’t want to. I was thinking of how to fix it or make it a feature rather than a flaw.

I pinched it a couple of different ways and that would have worked but I didn’t really like it. the heck with it, it’s just for me.

The basket part feels a little light even though there is 200grams of fibre in it.  It was a bigger resist but I reasoned to myself that there is more wool in 200 grams of Corriedale then there is in the same weight of Fin. I didn’t put any yarn in it, mostly because I forgot. I wanted to prevent the basket lip form stretching out any more. I tend to overfill my baskets and bags. Off to search my handspun for some appropriate yarn. I found a yarn that is predominantly the same colour as the Mallard on the bottom of the pot and did some decorative and structurally helpful stitching. I am pleased with the results.  Sorry about the pictures. I was trying to keep my arm out of the way and get far enough back to get the whole basket.

I think there will be more baskets in my future.

Color Mixing with Drum Carder

Color Mixing with Drum Carder

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Experimenting with color mixing by drum carder was on my list of to do’s and I got around to that this past week. I created a sample with similar colors when color mixing by felting alone in this post.

First off, I had to get the drum carder out and find a space for it on my studio table. The chosen colors were blue green and red orange. I wanted to see how the drum carder mixing differentiated from the felted layers of the same colors. I used the same proportions of colors that I used in the prior sample, which was about 3 to 1 red orange to blue green.

Here is the batt that I created with those colors. The photo on the left is one run through on the drum carder and the photo on the right is two runs through the carder. I then tore the batt in half as I didn’t need that big of a felt sample. So I still have another sample I can make in these colors.

I wanted to try a different way to texture the bark so I used some cut up pieces of heavy interfacing (Pellon). It’s probably about a quarter of an inch thick. I peeled apart a layer of the batt, put the interfacing pieces down and covered with the rest of the batt. After felting, I should have split the batt into two equal pieces, that would have worked better than a thinner layer on the bottom.

The front is shown on the left and the back on the right after felting. As you can see, the interfacing came through the ends as I didn’t have enough wool covering the ends. And the back shows that I had too thin a layer under the interfacing pieces. But it was easier to see the interfacing to stitch around. The interfacing was not thick enough to feel through the wool and didn’t give a good texture. (Doesn’t the photo on the left remind you of a short rib?)

I then added some free motion machine stitching so the texture was more evident from the interfacing pieces. I also trimmed off the ends that were showing and did a little needle felting repair in those areas.

Here are the two pieces side by side. The one on the right does have silk nuno felted on the top too. Which do you think works better? The carded sample is more homogeneous in neutralized red orange but I do like the mottled appearance of the layered color mixing on the right. The carded sample definitely needs more value contrast than what it has now. How do you mix your colors of wool? We’d love to hear about over on the forum.