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Die Cutting Felt

Die Cutting Felt

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Today I’m pleased to welcome Tracey Thompson as our Guest Artist. Tracey has been an active member on the forum and will be showing us her Die Cutting Machine and her experience cutting felt.

A recent post in the Felt and Fibre Forum led me to comment that I had tried to cut felt using a die cutting machine.  It was given to me free by a friend because she wanted to treat herself to the next model that had more bells and whistles!

Here is the die cutter, it is a Spellbinders Grand Calibur.  It cuts beautiful images in  card stock but how would it cope with felt?

I tried both commercial felt and my own prefelt in this machine.  The results were mixed with both felts, but I think this was largely down to the dies.  The more intricate the die, the more it mashed away at the felt, sometimes obliterating it!

I then remembered that I had a quite simple die in the shape of a snowflake, and as I still have Christmas cards to make, I thought I would have another go.  This next picture is my prefelt with the snowflake die and a Merry Christmas die.  The hole in the middle of the prefelt was where the snowflake came out perfectly, and the mashed up bit at the bottom was where Merry Christmas didn’t!

So I thought I would make a simple card to use the snowflakes on.  I put down two layers of Tanzanite from World of Wool, as I wanted a night time feel as a background.

I also wanted simple decoration, so I just lay a few blue and white mulberry silks on the top.

Here it is after felting.

I then ironed a piece of interfacing onto the back to make the stitching more stable. I had cut out a few snowflakes using a white commercial felt, and I used a double silver metallic thread to attach them to the felted piece.

So here is the finished card, it is a fairly simple one but it’s one to tick off the list!

Tracey, thanks for sharing your experience with us and for helping to fill in on my leave!

Playing Some More with Stencils Part 3

Playing Some More with Stencils Part 3

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Ruth’s Printing and Stenciling with Thickened Dye class has come to an end, but I’ve been continuing to experiment on felt and paper.  This week I’ve had some interesting results I wanted to share.

For this project on felted merino, I used several different colors and objects to try.

The lower left is a type of silver netting used at Christmas for wreaths and other projects. a dried Maple leaf, a plastic bottle sleeve and a tree stencil.  I used a combination of thick and thin dyes. And the red did bleed again when setting the dye.

The gray/silver color is the mesh, the red is the plastic bottle wrap.  The leaf is the green but not very distinguishable.  I used a brayer for all of them.  The stencil didn’t do well at all.  You can only see a few lines here and there.  I didn’t have a plan,  just wanted to see how each would print.

Then I decided to try acrylic on commercial felt.  For this I used a roller type stencil with different textures I made in class with purple metallic paint for a background. It didn’t print very clearly so I didn’t take a pic.  Then I  used handmade leaf stamps in metallic green and a commercial leaf stamp in the corners and a couple of metallic gold accents.

I thought the metallic paint would pop more on the dull smooth felt surface.

Cathy (Luvswool) loaned me a geometric stencil I wanted to try.  She had done some nice stenciling with acrylic on cloth.  I wanted to try it with dye on felt.  Here is the stencil on the felt.  You can see the one rectangle that is solid.  This is what I thought I wanted to do, make each shape solid, but it took a lot of dye and time.  When I just started stippling with an old brush, I liked it better. I also added extra colors in a couple of places.

 

Here it is with the stencil removed and the dye set.

I couldn’t undo the solid teal area, but I did add a couple other solid areas just for balance.  What do you think?

I had fun learning these techniques and as with anything it takes practice.  I’ll have a few more projects to share later.

 

Printing and Stenciling on Felt Part 1

Printing and Stenciling on Felt Part 1

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I’m sorry for the duplicate post. I accidentally hit publish while creating it.  So, now that I have your attention…

I am taking Ruth’s Printing, Stenciling with Thickened Dyes class, so I’ve been practicing.

I made nine different colors using acid dyes and two thicknesses.  I have several stencils laying around so I couldn’t wait to get started.  The feather was the most open so I started with that using three different colors with different thicknesses and brushes.

I used commercial prefelt for the feathers.

The midnight blue feather was created with a thicker dye mix and stencil brush.  But I found the brush kept pulling up the fibers.  So, on the yellow I used a thinner dye, with a foam brush, but I didn’t get as much definition and more running.  For the red, I used an old stiff paint brush with a thicker dye and I got a little better definition.

Now I realize this is all new and practice will help me learn to manage the process better.

I tried a plastic stamp with a thin silver and thick purple on prefelt.  But neither stamped well.  I think  the surface of the stamp was too smooth.

Then I tried a butterfly stencil (which was too detailed) with commercial felt.  The gold ochre was done with a thick dye and thin brush.  While wet it wasn’t too blurred.  However, after setting the dye and drying it was blurrier. This was while it was still wet.

The  teal butterfly was done with a brush, again on the commercial felt.  Same result after drying. Plus the dye and felt were very hard.  I had thought I’d do some stitching, but I think it’s too stiff.

Then I tried a Stencilgirl stencil I had purchased for the Paper Lamination Class.  I decided to use two separate colors on prefelt.

I will felt all the prefelt ones to see the results and how it changes, if it does.  I used a second piece of prefelt to tie the feathers together in one piece.

Next I’ll try making my own stencils and stamps and continue to play with different tools and dyes.

Hopefully, I won’t give you an early preview next week.

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