Felt Scrap Bowl Tutorial

Felt Scrap Bowl Tutorial

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Mixed Media Bowl made from Felt Scraps

Last year I made felt poinsettias for Christmas out of red and green felt. I ended up with a pile of felt scraps. I saved them of course. Who knows when you’ll need a small piece of felt? Recently, I saw someone online (I’m sorry I don’t remember where or have a link) making scrap bowls from left over quilter’s cotton fabric.  I thought that would make the perfect project for using up my felt scraps. So I used water-soluble stabilizer, some yarn, the felt scraps and free motion stitched it up on my sewing machine. It worked like a charm.

I have included the PDF tutorial below (Thanks Karen for helping me out with that!) and I’d love to see what you make using the tutorial. After I made the bowl, I thought it would be a great idea to use the green scraps to make small Christmas tree ornaments. I haven’t gotten those done yet but if I do, I’ll show you how they come out. This process could be used in a number of different ways and I’d love to hear if you come up with a different way to use the technique. Have fun and if you make something from the tutorial be sure to post it to our Flickr group photos.

felt-scrap-bowl-tutorial

Stock Solutions for Accurate Dyeing

Stock Solutions for Accurate Dyeing

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There is another way to do small or large amounts and get the same results each time.  The easiest and safest way is to make a stock solution.  It’s safest because dyes are most dangerous in there powder form, when the powder can fly around and land incredibly far from where you are measuring it.  It’s best to use a mask when measuring the powder. You don’t want to inhale the powder. You need to keep records so you know what you did. What I do for acid dyes is measure 10 grams of acid dye powder into 1 litre of boiling water.  This solution will be good for up to 6 months in sealed jars. Remember to labels your containers very well so everyone knows what they are. It’s best if you keep them separate and away from any food so there are no mistakes. This gives you a 1% solution so you can use 1cc (measured in a syringe for ease) of die solution for every gram of dry dye stuff (wool roving for instance) I want to dye to a medium shade. If I was pale shades I use half as much and for dark shades up to 4 times as much. This is the most accurate method. This can be hard if you don’t have a scale that measures very small amounts. Now if you’re not that precise that’s ok. As long as you use the same amounts every time you make your solution so if you use 2 teaspoons of dye in 1 quart of water and use a syringe to measure you will be fine. When you dye something write down how much wool you had then how many cc’s of each dye you used to make the colour. I used to keep a small sample of each batch on a card with the amounts of dye used so I could reproduce it when I wanted too.

A weekend of dying
Direct Dyeing

Direct Dyeing

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Direct dyeing is a method where the dye is applied directly to the fibre. This can be done with very small or fairly large amounts of fibre depending on what utensils are available to you, but it is particularly good for smaller amounts. One advantage is that the fibres don’t move around so there is less tangling or felting. Another advantage is that very small amounts of dye can be made up, reducing the risk of waste.

Dyed Silk Throwster’s waste

 I have written a step by step tutorial with lots of photos and a table to help work out very small amounts of dye/solution. I apologise to anyone more familiar with imperial measurements, the quantities used are so small that the tiniest measuring spoons are used and they are metric, so it was easier to stick to one measurement. And also US and UK fluid ounces differ, and even cups have metric, US and Canadian versions 🙂  If anyone needs a converter I find online conversion is excellent for everything.

Direct Dyeing Tutorial, please click for PDF

Spiral Challenge

Spiral Challenge

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This is my first item for the spiral challenge. It’s a large heavy shawl I made for a cool fall demonstration. It started out about 10 feet across the long side and 4 feet from the point to the top.  After felting it’s about 8 feet long and 3 feet deep.  The main body is 23 micron merino wool and the spirals are multicoloured merino. It is lovely and warm.

Degumming Silk Throwsters Waste

Degumming Silk Throwsters Waste

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A few years ago I was given some gorgeous multi-coloured Throwsters waste in a fibre swap. I’ve always used it sparingly, worried it’d run out and I’d have to begrudgingly pay a ridiculous amount of money for a tiny handful. Then a few months ago I was ordering wool and fibres from World of Wool and thought I’d take the plunge and order some gummed throwster’s waste since it cost less for 100g than most people charge for 10g dyed. I had no idea it’d be so stiff and dull! The complete opposite of what I was used to. I had absolutely no idea how to de-gum it either 🙂

A couple of days later after a few hours searching the internet, I was confident I’d pieced together enough info to try de-gumming for myself. I thought I’d probably have to try it a few times before getting it right, but was pleasantly surprised to see it work first time with excellent results 🙂

If you’d like to try it yourself, or are just interested in the process, I’ve made a tutorial with lots of photos and an easy to follow table for working out quantities.

Degumming Silk Throwsters Waste

I’ll be following up later this week with a tutorial for direct dyeing small amounts of animal fibres with acid dyes, which can be used  to dye your degummed throwster’s waste some gorgeous colours 🙂

I have to say Thank You to foragingfibers whose pictures convinced me it was worth trying to degum my own throwster’s waste 🙂

Marketplace Mondays

Marketplace Mondays

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Marketplace Mondays is a regular article that will be featured on most Mondays. If you are interested in topics about the business of being an artist, make sure to stop by each Monday. We will be discussing issues such as developing a product line, reviews of various venues where handcrafted work can be sold, pricing strategies, retail vs. wholesale, working with galleries, photographing your work, developing your “brand”, writing an artist statement and much more. If there is a specific topic that you would like more information about, please leave a comment and we’ll try to accommodate your requests.

For our first post, Zed has made a terrific tutorial on how to make a banner for a website such as ETSY. Making your own personal banner from your own photographs will help to ‘brand’ your store and attract people to buy your products. Think about what you want your banner to symbolize first. What type of photographs best represent what you do? If you already have a logo or business cards with photos, consider using the same photos or logo in your banner. Consistency is very important so that your customers will recognize you no matter the venue. If you have a Facebook page, a blog, a website and an ETSY shop, using a similar or the same banner on all of these sites will establish a consistent web presence.

Once you’ve picked out the photos you want to use for your banner, just click on the PDF file below and follow Zed’s tutorial. She uses Photoshop but most photo editing programs will be similar. If you don’t have a photo editing program, check out Gimp at http://www.gimp.org/. It’s a free program that you can download and use to edit your photos.

How to Make a Banner

Felting Around the Web

Felting Around the Web

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Periodically, we’ll be posting about fun felting projects that we’ve found other people are doing. If you’d like to be included in one of these posts, please leave a comment and the URL of the post you’d like featured.

Needle Felting

Fay Maxwell Video Using a Multi Needle Felting Tool

Eyes of Time – Needle Felted Friends

Etsy Russian Team-Needle Felted cartoon dog

Wet Felting

Gala Filc’s Wet Felted Scarves

Heather’s Sampler Needle-Case

Loco Lindy’s Felted Scarf plus bonus cute alpaca photos

Ingermaaike’s Felted Mittens

Elis’ Felt Feet

Rabenfilz Lighted Mussel Shells

New Felting and Fiber Forum

New Felting and Fiber Forum

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When we started working on this website/blog, one thing we were all really keen on was having interaction with likeminded people, sharing our enthusiasm for felt and fibres with others and helping each other out.
The website is a great way for us to share and connect with others, but it does have its limitations…So, we started working on building a forum. Now we have a place where we can have more interaction, where anyone can start topics, ask questions, get help and support from a wide community, share great photos, advice and info, meet friends and have fun! 

We’d love it if you came and joined us at the Felting and Fiber Studio Forum, and shared your enthusiasm, curiosity, knowledge and photos. Whether your interests are felting, mixed media, spinning, weaving, freeform crochet or something we probably haven’t heard of and need to see, we’d love for you to be involved in our new community 🙂

To register, just follow the link at the bottom of this post, or click the Forum button in the side bar. Once you’ve registered, we just have to ‘approve’ you… don’t worry, it’s just a measure to keep spammers out 🙂

http://feltandfiberstudio.proboards.com/

Plastic Fibre twists

Plastic Fibre twists

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Plastic fibre twists

This is my finished twisted plastic piece for the Studio Challenge. I’d originally planned to make a smaller piece, but once I started making the twists, I really liked the look of them so I made more to make a larger piece. I blended merino wool and recycled plastic bottle fibre with hand carders, then separated small amounts and rolled into twists.  The base is 3 layers of merino tops, and the merino and plastic fibre twists were layed on top. I layed the twists so that the wispy ends met in the centre and went over the edge of the base by about an inch.

Plastic Fibre Twists Close Up
 
 
 

I’d used the plastic fibre a few times before and expected this to be more ‘spongy’ than it was, it does have a nice look and feel to it, it feels nice and thick, but lightweight. We’d love to see your work with twists, twirls or spirals 🙂

The Mobius Twist

The Mobius Twist

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When Zed first told us the theme of the challenge, twist, the first thing I thought of was making a Möbius scarf. I have seen lots of these types of scarves that have been knitted but hadn’t seen any that were felted. So I thought I’d give it a try.

mobiusscarf

This is the result, a scarf with a twist. I was supposed to leave the ends dry when I was making it so I could connect them but I somehow forgot about that when I was wetting the wool down. So I ended up using my handy sander to felt the inner portions of the scarf and leaving the connecting ends alone. Once most of the scarf passed the pinch test, I connected the two ends with a half twist in the scarf and felted the two ends together. I used Merino wool and have left the scarf its natural color.

mobiusscarf3

The scarf can be worn so that the top twist covers your head or it can be doubled around your neck. It is nice and warm and I’ve been wearing it with my black coat. So the scarf with a twist is a success. Have you been felting with a twist? We’d love to see what you’ve done. Just go to our Flickr group and post your twist challenge projects there.