3D – Felting and Fiber Studio

Pandagirl’s Year End Round Up 2017

December 30, 2017 Marilyn aka Pandagirl Comments 16 comments

I’m always amazed at what I accomplished at the end of year. This year I took a few classes in order to expand my creativity in addition to experimenting on my own. I also tried to use up more materials and finish some UFOs.

Here is a bedside case for odds and ends made with some merino inside and unknown fiber batt with silk embellishment.

Experimenting with different types of yarn to make a table runner.

Our First Quarter Challenge – Fauvism.

Weaving then felting.

A Valentine gift for granddaughter Lisa.

Teri Berry’s Snail hat class.

Finishing and hanging an eco print. Crochet around wire bowl.

Framing the felted weaving.

I did a lot of experimenting with crochet stitches.

Practicing for Ruth’s Free Motion Embroidery class.

Crochet hats for my granddaughter and her new premature brother Ken.

A dimensional potholder.

Learning more crochet stitches.

Making a crochet hook case from a crochet sample.

A bowl for the Second quarter Challenge – Celtic

Using yarn on a resist for a vase cover.

Adding dimension to the hummingbird/tiger lily picture.

Crocheting scrubbies.

Felt and crochet earrings.

Crochet beaded bowl with stiffener.

A Pumpkin for Ken.

The Third Quarter Challenge – Edo Period; felt and hand embroidery Sakura.

Ribbon embroidery and framing.

Playing with thickened dye for Ruth’s class on felt.

Finishing a case from UFO pile and FME Butterfly

Maneki-Neko for Third Quarter Challenge Edo Period.

Framing the Rooster.

More stencil play with acrylic and thickened dye.

The Fourth Quarter Challenge — Suprematist

Penguin’s Poinsettia Holiday card.

A couple of scarves for my daughter in laws parents in Japan where it’s as cold as Chicago.

I want to let everyone know I am taking a leave of absence to focus on my health and family. I will be around just not posting weekly. We have a lot of talented artists that will be filling in starting with Tracey Thompson next week.

I want to thank everyone for helping out to give me this time. If you or someone you know has something to share — it doesn’t have to be felt but anything fiber related including paper, please contact me or one of the other moderators on the forum and we’ll get you on the schedule.

I hope everyone has a Happy, Healthy and Prosperous New Year! Happy Creating in 2018!

Penquin’s 2017 Christmas Card

December 14, 2017 Marilyn aka Pandagirl Comments 18 comments

Penquin (Anne Hickley) made me a beautiful Panda card for the holiday exchange. For some reason I was stuck on the idea of a Poinsettia. You may have already seen it on the Forum.

I made one for myself last year to hang as a decoration and wanted to do another. Of course, making a card became more complicated than I had anticipated. But I enjoyed making it.

I started out making thin red prefelt and cut out 5 or 6 layers of different sizes, putting plastic wrap between each layer leaving a hole in the center so they’d all felt together. I had some green for the leaves and laid those underneath. Unfortunately, I didn’t take pictures before I felted them. But here is the flower after felting with beads for the center.

I stitched each petal and leaf.

Then I felted a white background with some sparkly fabric for a snowy effect.

I did another without the sparkle to be the back. On the back I used Luminescent paint to write the words.

Now it was time to put it all together. I used stabilizer on the back of the sparkly piece and sewed the flower on by hand.

Then the fun part was putting them together using the blanket stitch.

I’m happy Penguin enjoyed it and hope everyone is ready for the holidays!

Maneki-Neko for 2017 3rd Quarter Challenge Part 2

October 3, 2017 Marilyn aka Pandagirl Comments 23 comments

I never dreamed this project would take me almost two weeks to complete. But it is finished.

If you missed part one, you can read about it here:

https://feltingandfiberstudio.com/2017/09/25/pandagirls-maneki-neko-for-2017-3rd-quarter-challenge-part-1/

It would seem adding the details to finish would be easy. Not!

I needle felted blue roving around the eyes. The gems underneath are actually blue, but because they were put over black it wasn’t obvious what color they were.

Then I spent time looking for a gold bell, but decided on using a wool ball instead. When I added the ribbon I made a slit on both sides of the arm to pull it thru.

The nose and mouth are also needle felted. But at one point, the nose fell off and had to be reattached.

I curled over the raised paw and secured it in order to show the paw and nails.

The nails proved to be a real challenge and after ripping them out at least a half dozen times, trying needle felting, then using floss and finally rayon thread.

I tried needle felting the arm in front and the tail in back to show the dimension, but it was negligible partly because of it being black. So, I stitched around them which helped.

Another challenge was the writing on the coin. I made a gold prefelt and copied the characters I had translated from an app for Good Health and confirmed with my daughter in law, Mari. I transferred the characters to a stabilizer.

I thought using the satin stitch on my Pfaff machine would work, but its not a straight satin stitch, but the stitches varied. So I decided to use a triple stitch which was fine until I reached curves. I ended up finishing by hand. I’m hoping I haven’t butchered the characters too much. After finishing the coin, I slip stitched it to the kitty.