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Clasps, Closures and Fasteners

Clasps, Closures and Fasteners

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You might remember my post a few weeks ago about sorting and using felt scraps, and the notebook cover I made with offcuts. Well, as much as I liked the button closure, I wanted something a little more secure. I had a hunt through my craft drawers and found a bag clip I’d salvaged from something I threw away (I recently discovered these are called Delrin Clips) and using some more felt offcuts, attached this instead of the button.

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One of my WIPs at the moment is a small shoulder bag, just big enough for a camera and purse. The closure I’ve used on this is a metal magnetic bag clasp. They’re quite easy to use: each half comes in two parts, you need to make a small cut in the fabric, push the metal ‘prongs’ through, then add the little washer and fold the prongs in. I haven’t decided yet whether to cover the top with more felt or maybe a large fimo button.

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This got me thinking about all the different kinds of claps, closures and fasteners I have. I have the usual buttons, zips, poppers/snap fasteners, hooks and eyes etc, but I also like to salvage and collect any I find cheap. Not so long ago, I saw cheap packs of dog and cat collars and leads in Poundland (like a dollar store) and couldn’t resist buying a pack, which gave me a few Delrin clips and Trigger Hooks.

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These Delrin clips were either bought or salvaged from old bags. The small ones are slightly different, they take a cord type of attachment rather than a flat webbing or ribbon type of fixture.

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Most of the Delrin clips I have do take a flatter attachment though, so I just had to buy some nice braid for attaching them 🙂

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I’ve managed to add to my collection of fasteners while I’ve been doing a lot of clearing out and tidying up lately. I salvaged quite a few lobster style trigger hooks, D-rings, split rings and key rings from old or broken or unwanted items.

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Do you have any interesting clasps, closures or attachments? Do you have any tips for salvaging or buying them cheaply? We’d love to hear your ideas 🙂

Experiment in Dryer Felting

Experiment in Dryer Felting

Comments 13 comments

I have been hearing about felting in your dryer all over the place.  I wouldn’t mind less time rolling my felt so I thought I better give it a try. I wanted to try some of the felt batts I made last week and wanted to try some designs for belt pouches. None of these have been ironed or blocked yet

I used batts for all of these. The orange(supposed to look like leather and does in person) one is merino I dyed and carded into a batt.  The pink is from last weeks carding of left overs. It is mostly merino with a little corriedale in it. The brown striped pouch and flat piece of felt are from last weeks left over carding as well but has a lot of different fibers with different micron counts, some dyed and some natural.

This one came out the best. It felted the most in the dryer.  It didn’t shrink much. It didn’t buckle it’s resist.

This one did the next best. The ropes attached well and it was felted but not as much as I would like.

These two were felted but not much.

For this experiment I decided to treat them all the same. I laid  the wool out around the resists, covered them with netting and rubbed them all the same. I then wrapped them around a damp towel then wrapped that in another towel and tied the bundle. I let it bump around in my dryer with no heat for 20 min then unrolled it, made sure the net wasn’t stuck and rolled them up from the other end.  I let it do another 20 min in the dryer. I took it back to my work table unwrapped them, cut out the resists and then rolled all of them 50 times  in both directions in my reed mat with a pool noodle in the middle. This was  to set the cut edge and felt them a little more.

I then fulled them as I  normally would, rinsed out all the soap and blocked them a little. I would say that over all it worked.  They are not felted enough for my liking and need more work.   The felt was not far enough along when it came out of the dryer. I normally wouldn’t has started fulling them when I did for this experiment but the idea was to eliminate the manual rolling.  I am not to happy with the pink pouch or the brown pieces. I am going to wet them again and roll them in my stick blind. Next week I will let you know how that went.

I think it definitely has potential. There are things that would make it better.  I think if the dryer didn’t have the fins in it that would be better. It would roll it more and thump(drop) it less. I see that some of the modern dryers don’t have fins.  I have plans for a roller that uses a big tube. Right now I am looking for a suitable tube. If I ever find one and get my hubby to make it I will definitely let you know.