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Tag: felt sheep

This and That.

This and That.

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It is almost Fall. You can feel it in the air, and a few trees are starting to change. Usually, we like to hang on to summer as long as possible, but I am happy the dry, searing heat of this summer is finally gone. Yes, I am touching some wood as I say that.  It’s been a busy 2 weeks with school starting and the market picking up. Suddenly, we were out of meat pies, and I had to get baking. That doesn’t leave much time to felt. I did manage to get to the Almont Fibre Festival to help with the demonstration.

I put all my sheep key chains together

I am wondering about putting some wax or something on their ears to make them a little flatter and protect them. My thread wax is too hard. I wondered about some of the solid lip balms. It’s mostly wax. I think that might be too soft. I’m not sure what to do. I don’t want to use glue because it will make them too hard, or the PVA (school) glue can take up water and get tacky. Any suggestions?

I am packaging them so they stay neat. I had to get bigger bags for them. The ones that came with the card were not big enough. I have a shrink wrap machine that has a hot wire cutter, so I will cut the bags down so they fit properly.

 

While searching for some lost samples, the book resist thing I did about 10 years ago surfaced. The idea I had was to weave the ropes into a basket. But not thinking it through, I made 6 lobes and strings. You need an uneven number for the weaving to work. I took it to a social, thinking I had a good idea of a way to weave it. It didn’t work. Partly, it was not cooperative and partly (mostly?) I was impatient. Anyway, everybody had fun looking at it and playing with it. The general consensus was that it wants to be a jellyfish. So, I need to create some long, wavy, ribbony pieces, and possibly some long curls for the middle to hang down inside the long tentacles. I wonder if it will take me another 10 years. LOL

 

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Needle Felted Sheep Workshop.

Needle Felted Sheep Workshop.

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It’s the time of year when thoughts turn to warm woolly sweaters( jumpers). So, where do they get all that wonderful wool in amazing colours? Why for colourful sheep of course.  Dyed in the wool as it were. And where do you get those? Well, you make them of course. They can really spruce up a manger scene for Christmas or you can add them to the scenery of your model railroad or add a pin and wear them.

I had 8 lovely ladies to make some cute little sheep. There should have been 9 but one couldn’t make it so her sister who was there paid her materials fee and took some supplies to her so she could make a sheep at home.

After this point, once the students arrive, I forget to take pictures.  We start with the legs. I show them how to make them with needle felting. It is long and tedious to make them dense enough to hold the sheep up. Then I show them how to make wet felted snakes to cut up for legs.  You can see a plastic bag on the table it has the sheep samples and all the snakes I made so they could have legs and move on the the rest of the sheep. they make bodies, heads, and ears and then they needle felt them all together. they usually look a little wonky at this point and everyone has a good laugh at them and worries there sheep will not look right.

Most of them look like they are on stilts at this point. It is better to start that way and then do some hoof trimming at the end, to get the length you want.

Next is the best part, giving them their colourful ( or natural) coats. we used Bluefaced Leicester curls. they are small nice curls.

As they have all their wool, their personalities emerge.

Everyone seems happy, I will need to find out if I had any comments on the evaluation forms. Fingers crossed there are no complaints. When you teach with our guild we have the student fill out an anonymous evaluation. It helps to head off problems before they really start and sometimes you get good ideas for your next class. Students pop them into an envelope and it’s sealed. Someone else opens it and has a look and you get the feedback later.

This is my last post for the year so I hope you all have a

Happy Holiday and a Fantastic New Year!