Felt lantern cover – Felting and Fiber Studio

Felted Lantern Cover Workshop.

February 1, 2026 Shepherdessann Comments 22 comments

I got to teach a felted lantern cover class recently. It was mostly people who had never handled wool before. This class is fun, interesting and technical. This project requires a very thin layout, but if it develops holes, that’s ok because it lets the light out. It’s a great one to use to practice thin layout.

I made a new sample with prefelt shapes on the inside and sari silk on the outside. I didn’t have a sample of either of those. It always amazes me how much the sill disappears when you wet it, even on contrasting colours

And the finished sample. The inside shapes worked really well. Some of the mwere swallowed by the scrunched-up part, but that’s ok.

I had eight students. I let them choose if they wanted to make it all enough to be able to make part of it scrunched, or just tall enough for it to fit the glass vase/lantern. I almost forgot to take pictures. It was about an even split. Scrunching them makes a fairly simple design stand out.

I almost forgot to take pictures. Here they are laying out their wool, lots of different ideas.

Then, of course, there was all the rubbing and rolling

Here are some finished but still wet. I am not sure how I ended up with only 5 of them. I was sure I took a picture of each of them.

And here are some pictures my students sent me when they were all dry.

I think they look great. This is a great project if you don’t have a lot of time, but want the satisfaction of start to finish in one session.

A lantern for a door prize

October 24, 2023 Shepherdessann Comments 21 comments

Hi folks. It seems I am running behind as I didn’t know it was Tuesday already. So lots of pictures and not much text today.

My guild Sale and Exhibition is in a couple of weeks and I promised a door prize of a lantern. In reality, it is a glass vase with a cover and fairy lights inside. They are very pretty. You want them to look interesting when they are not lit as well as when they are lit.

So I started out to make a scene. I used bats to save layout time.

water

ground

sky

And then wrap it around

and then I decided it was still boring so I should add a little village.

I thought the white was too bright so I went will black. I want a hint of a village in the distance. I did one on each side.

In retrospect, I should have gone with white. There would probably have been enough migration of fibres to dull it down a bit. As was predictable if I had thought about it they disappeared. I will shave it later to see if I can get a hint of where they are and add them back. but it can wait as after felting I decided it was way too thick for a lantern. I am definitely out of practice felting. I do like the scrunched-up water and flared sky though.