Felting and Fiber Studio

When I announced the challenge, I had already decided that I wanted to use a book resist and make a more complex vessel. Then Teri wrote her guest post on the book resist and it reinforced my intentions.

I worked all day on my vessel and still didn’t get it finished. It is at the holding together/mostly felted stage and I have removed the resist but it still needs a lot of work. I haven’t fulled it yet or made the “eyes”.

I decided to add spikes to the outside of the vessel. I made 15 black and brown spikes and you can see the resist below the spikes. I sewed it together on the sewing machine. It has 6 pages but I decided I would rather have an uneven number so I taped two together for 5 pages.

Here’s another view of the resist opened up.

This is quite a ways along into the process. I have done one layer of wool on all the pages and now I am adding the “eyes” on the front and back of each page. There is a small circle of plastic to resist that area so I can then make a crater. The spikes are at least staying on at this point.

I went ahead and cut a circle in the top and removed the resist. The bottom has a small hole where I didn’t get enough wool around that portion of the resist. It gets a little tricky at the juncture where the resists are sewn together. I started to full the vessel but I was tired and it was time for dinner. So I thought I would just get back to it this weekend.

So for now I have this tub of tentacles. It’s fairly strange looking and I still need to fix the craters to make “eyes” and then get some heavy fulling done.

Have you started the first quarter challenge? This was definitely a challenge as I haven’t tried this type of resist before and just to make it more challenging, I added long spiky tentacles. I will show you the finished vessel soon. If you have been creating a piece for the challenge, please share it with us on the forum.