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Pandagirl’s 4th Quarter Challenge

Pandagirl’s 4th Quarter Challenge

Comments 8 comments

I decided to take a little different direction with the Suprematist Challenge.  Ruth had used offcuts for her background.  I decided to use scraps for my shapes.

Zed had mentioned texture which is always my preference in creating most anything. So, I dumped out one of my bags of samples and scraps and started to cut shapes.

Sorry for the pic on my kitchen table, but I couldn’t help but start to organize them and wanted to save my tentative design.

Then I realized I’d better find a background. So, I used a piece of felt I made for a class with Fiona Duthie to layout designs. I pinned the pieces after I moved them around a bit.

Since most of the pieces had already been felted, I had to sew them to the background.  For most all I used a very, very fine black rayon thread.  For the lighter green pieces, I changed to a light green thread.  But I don’t think I had to.  It was felted on black prefelt ad probably wouldn’t have shown much anyway.

The pieces varied a lot in texture and materials used from nuno, throwsters waste, ribbon, silk hankies, locks, and some decorate fabrics.

It was also interesting that the pieces not only had lots of textures, but dimension.  Some of the shapes got a little distorted with the sewing.

The back was a negative of the front which looked like a puzzle to me.

Here are a couple of closeups:

Sorry my photo skills aren’t the best.

Depending on which way you turn the picture, you get a different feel.  This is the one I like the best.

Have you finished your challenge piece yet?  If I have time I may try using prefelt.

Something Different

Something Different

Comments 16 comments

I’m still trying to finish projects and WIPs so I can tidy my summer sewing stuff away. I found an unfinished project from years ago when I was putting some felt offcuts away. Hopefully, this link will show some of the pieces I made, if not search my photostream for ’embellished’. It inspired me to finish it off and make some more. So I had a rummage through my offcuts and found lots of nice ones, so many that I started to think that maybe I wanted to do something a bit bigger, like a notebook cover (surprise, surprise!). I found some thin pieces of felt to use as a base and sewed them together. I really wanted to make something the complete opposite of the carefully measured and carefully and neatly sewn notebook covers I usually make. So after spreading all the felt offcuts out, I got some contrasting sewing thread and set to work attaching the pieces to my felt base. I didn’t expect it to take as long as it did and I got through quite a few episodes of Foyle’s War while I sewed 🙂

When I’d attached all the pieces, I attached a piece of thin blue cotton fabric to hide all the stitching and thread. Then I folded the flaps in, machine stitched them in place, then hand stitched the top and bottom edges. I think you’ll agree, that it’s nothing like what I usually make 🙂  This is the front:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAAnd this is the back:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAI tried hard to make sure nothing matched, and that it wasn’t too neat or even, including the top and bottom edges, I just followed the edges of the base felt. This is the cover opened out:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAI didn’t attach felt pieces to the base where the flaps would be, I didn’t want it to be too thick. The felt I used for the flaps was originally white merino and cotton which I experimented on with direct dyeing.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAOLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAI also made a strap closure for it in much the same way as I made the book:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAIt just fits around the book and clips together with a Delrin clip.

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I thought this notebook would stick out like  a sore thumb in my etsy shop, but surprisingly it doesn’t. But maybe that’s because it probably has a little offcut from almost every other piece in there with it!

An Old Piece and a New Piece

An Old Piece and a New Piece

Comments 12 comments

I only realised yesterday when I started to plan my blog post, that all my photos are still on my old hard drive. I was looking for another felt scrap piece that I recently started on when I came across a piece I made quite a while ago which I never posted about. If any of it looks familiar, it’s because I used it for the banners for the studio site and the forum 🙂
I wanted to make a piece with colours and textures inspired by the natural colours of the landscapes between Manchester and West Yorkshire. I used lots of different coloured natural wools and wool tops: Merino, Bluefaced Leicester, Manx Loaghtan, Zwartble, Black Welsh Mountain, Jacob, Gotland. I also used raw gotland locks and Lincoln locks.
OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAI mostly used mid to dark shades of wool and animal fibre, there’s some sandy coloured Alpaca in here too.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAFor texture I used some wool nepps.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAAnd also some silk noil, I added a lot of this so it would look like a solid band.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERATo create a kind of mossy/spongey moorland type grass look, I blended some plastic fibre with some natural shades and  green shades of merino.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAI was really pleased with the way it turned out, especially the shape, I wanted an organic shape because I thought this suited it better.
I did find the scrap piece that I was working on, I think this will be the outside of a notebook cover.

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Mixed Media Piece From Felt Scraps

Mixed Media Piece From Felt Scraps

Comments 29 comments

Last year I was talking about sorting my felt and fibre scraps into categories. I sorted my felt offcuts by size ranging from long and wide to short and narrow. This photo shows them. I was trying to work out what to do with the smallest pieces. I wondered how it’d look if I just pushed them close together on top of a piece of fabric and sewed them into place. So, I tried. I started in the centre with some red pieces, and they worked alright, so I added more. I kept to similar colours and added some pieces of fabric too because I liked how the nuno felt pieces looked. I also added some art yarns for a bit more texture. I kept adding and sewing until the red section was done, then I worked on the blue part and did the green part last. When it was finished it looked like this:

mixed mediaI kept turning it around, folding it, measuring it. I made sure the piece of fabric I worked on was big enough for a book cover, but the finsihed piece was too thick for that. I turned it over, folded it again and measured a bit more, then decided I could make a book cover out of it if I cut it and used different felt for the inside flaps. So, more measuring, hunting for felt and sewing of felt to fabric. This is what the inside looked like before I’d quite finished the bottom edge:

insideAnd, this is what it looked like once all the edges were finished:

outsideI’m not sure whether I prefer it with the red part on the front:

redOr whether I like the blue better:

blueI had quite a good sized piece left over, and I actually really like the green part the best, so I thought I’d use it for a gadget/camera/phone case. This is one side:

frontAnd this is the other:

backI don’t feel so odd now for saving all the tiniest bits of felt scraps ‘just in case’  🙂

Felt Scrap Christmas Tree Ornaments

Felt Scrap Christmas Tree Ornaments

Comments 11 comments

These ornaments are made with the same technique that I used for the Felt Scrap Bowl Tutorial . This was much quicker though because these are only about 3″ x 6″. I had the scraps left over from a prior project and I didn’t change the shape of the scraps at all. I just placed them so they looked like branches. I did cut the trunk pieces out of left over brown felt.

I then sandwiched the scraps in two pieces of water-soluble stabilizer and free motion stitched with dark green thread.

Here’s one of the trees after the stabilizer was dissolved.

I was just going to glue the sequins on the trees as it would be faster. I tried one but the sequins were already falling off and I really didn’t like how it looked.

So I ended up sewing on the sequins with a bead to hold it in place.

I finished two trees. I did add a loop of ribbon to the top so they can be hung.  It was fairly quick for one of my “last-minute Christmas projects”. I always vow I won’t make anything this Christmas but I never seem to keep that promise.

Happy Holidays to everyone and thanks for stopping by!

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