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Some More Happy Felt Slipper Makers.

Some More Happy Felt Slipper Makers.

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A couple of Sundays ago  I had a Slipper Workshop. I had 4 ladies that had not felted before. There were no crazy toes in this group.

As usual, I was too busy talking to take all the pictures I should. So we start with everyone finishing the wool layout for their slippers.  I have them do both sides dry, and then put them together. 2 were doing a reg slipper and 2 the ear template. You can see them on the front 2 tables.

 

 

After they had everything together and wet they added some embellishments.

 

Then there was rubbing(no picture). I am definitely too busy talking during that, to help distract them so it doesn’t seem so long.  And then rolling, Usually by this time I have them all chatting.

Then it’s time to cut them open and see how they look.  The faces say these don’t look right, it’s never going to work, and they will never shrink enough to fit.   We change how they are folded

And then …..Oh no, not more rolling

once they have mostly shrunk it’s time to make them fit, just the way they want them to. Some like them a little big, some like them to fit like a glove. the glove people have to do some fulling on their own personal slipper blocks, better known as their feet.

I managed to make a short video of one of the ladies fulling her slippers on her feet. Not only that, I uploaded it to YouTube and managed to embed it here. Thank you Leonor for the help on that front. At least I think it was Leonor, I can’t find the email anymore. Edit: It turns out it was Terry that helped me, Sorry Terry. Thank you for the help.

And lastly, 2 ladies shared their finished slippers.

Everyone seemed to have a great time and be happy with their slippers, You can’t ask for better than that.

 

Another group of slipper makers.

Another group of slipper makers.

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Felt slippers have proved popular this year and we added another class. Pointy toes were very popular with this group.

Here they are all diligently laying out their fibre.

a group laying out loose wool for felt slippers a group laying out loose wool for felt slippers a group laying out loose wool for felt slippers a group laying out loose wool for felt slippers

And seems I don’t know how to use my camera. I know I took in progress pictures but I don’t have any. So we move to the end of the day.

 

and here are a few that people sent of finished slippers

It was a great class and we had a lot of fun. It is always interesting to see how different everyone’s slippers are.

Slipper Workshop

Slipper Workshop

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Not very long ago I taught a felt slipper workshop. There were 6 students including Jan. Here is the set-up in my guilds classroom It holds 6 tables reasonably well. You can see the table looms waiting for class on the left.

           

After we discussed the different styles of slippers, everyone traced their foot and sized up to make their template. We used floor underlay for the templates.

          

Everyone laid out both sides of their resist and got them nicely wrapped around

Then started embellishing them

Then it was time for felting. Start gently with some rubbing

       

Then rolling. No rolling pictures, you would think with everyone busy rolling I would have lots of time to take pictures but I guess I was too busy talking.

then more rubbing to heal the cut and on to fulling and shaping

And don’t forget to try them on to see where they need more work and in which directions. I brought new bread bags so they could try their slippers on without getting wet feet or socks.

Getting there

Here are some of the finished slippers.

 

Now you are probably thinking that at the top I said Jan was in the class but I haven’t seen her. Well, that is because Jan is the problem child of the class. She can’t just do what everyone else wants to do, and so she gets a section all of her own. Jan wants boot-style slippers. Ok, that’s no problem and you are wondering what’s the problem with that?  Well, she wants really tall rear entry boot, style “slippers”.

I had her come to class early so we would have time to discuss the how of making rear entry extra tall slippers. She says they are slippers and not boots.  You can see Jan’s diagram of what she wants in the first picture. I was explaining how the resists would work. This was best explained with a mini paper example.

Jan’s foot pattern and then her mane resist drawn out.

 

Jan started laying out wool about the same time as the others but she had much more wool and resist to cover.

she did a lot of rubbing but I didn’t get a picture of that and then she started rolling. By the end of class, the slippers had started to felt well but were not up to fulling yet. So now the next step is for her to visit me over the holidays and finish the slippers. I think this means I need to sweet-talk one of my men to bring the dryer into the studio. I am not sure where it got stored. I am sure letting the dryer do some of the manual work is a good idea. Maybe we can work on the dinosaur bag while it rolls around and around. These slippers should be good for sorting out what needs to be tweaked to make some more solid boots. These are Corriedale but we would both like to make some good boots out of Finnish wool. Have you made booths? What wool did you use?

As a measure of how much effort and concentration went into these, Jan only had about 20 or so pictures to share with me. All the pictures of Jan’s work are hers except the last one of Jan rolling.

Wishing Everyone a Very Happy Holiday Season!

Finished Slippers and Something New

Finished Slippers and Something New

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I had planed to do a post about The Holiday Card I sent to Ruth  but it hasn’t arrived at her house yet so I don’t want to spoil the surprise.

Instead plan B. As promised  some pictures of the finished slippers. I made these for a sample for my slipper class a few weeks ago.

I left the one on the right flat so people could see how it was cut. I will steam or wet it and put it into the correct shape.  The one on the left is how is should look . I plan to make a leather sole for them.

The other thing I did for the class was leave one as it was when the felting was finished to show how the wool migrates through the decoration.

And the other one I shaved with a regular disposable razor to show how you can bring it back up.

And now for my something new. It is something I have  been talking about and thinking about for a while. Can you guess what it is.

How about now

or now

I am sure you know now

A new camera! It was on sale so now was the time. I had to use my phone to take the pictures because it is so new the battery is still charging. Now I need to figure out some good background and lighting I can use for pictures in my windowless studio. I am thinking some sort of shear on a frame to defuse the harsh light and some wight card for bouncing the light. Maybe a big light gray and or white felt sheet for background.

 

Felted slipper class

Felted slipper class

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This last Saturday I taught a slipper class to 6 lovely ladies. I gave them a choice of templates, so there were different types of slippers being made at the same time. We used the one that looks like bunny ears, the one with little pointy the ears on the sides, boots and some pointy ones.  They used Corriedale wool for the slippers. I prefer something like Fin wool but it is hard to get it in colours and everyone wants colours. So Corriedale is a good compromise. After everyone made templates it was onto laying out the wool.

Then on to rubbing rolling

Once everything was hanging together well, it was time to take the resists out. You might remember Christine made one of the pixie hats in the hat workshop a few weeks ago. Hat Class. Hat Class She is planning for curly toes.

 

And on to fulling. There is scrunching and throwing of course and we had a washboard and a car mat to help with the shrinking.  Sorry I have no pictures of that.

You can custom fit your slipper right on your food of course.  You can really see how much it has changed compared to the one that hasn’t been fulled yet.

This one was almost done.

Judy’s are the only ones managed to get a picture of at the end of class.  She put a little of all the embellishment fibers on them to see how they felted.  She still wants to a just the top at the opening. She is going to make insoles and add a leather sole.

I am adding this in. Judy had some felt insoles and she needled some special supports for her feet onto it and fit them into her new slippers.

And Christine’s curly toes

 

 

 

 

 

 

More Bits

More Bits

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This week I did a few things. I put hang tags and price stickers on all the dryer balls, bags, soap and ruffle neck scarves that go to the Log Farm for sale. At shows I usually just use signs when I have groups of things that are all the same price. I delivered those and almost immediately got a call from the Museum store saying they needed more soap and dryer balls.  Yesterday I made up the dryer balls and popped them into the washer today.

I would show you what they look like done but my dryer died. Thats a job for tomorrow now.

I did however get some soap felted.

The other thing I got started on Friday(I think) was some slippers for samples for a class I have on Dec 1. I didn’t have a sample of the ear template style.

I only got as far as laying out.

They will also be a sample of Finnish wool. We use Corriedale for the class. Its a good felter without being to fine like merino and it comes in lots of colours. People seem to want colour. This will show them what another kind of wool felts up like.

That was my week. I hope you managed some felting done too.

 

Ruffle Scarves and Slippers

Ruffle Scarves and Slippers

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I am still working toward my up coming show. I have been making some short ruffle scarves that should work well inside winter coats. I use a template to get the proportions right and have them shrink to the right size. You can see the template below the scarf below and you can see how much it shrank.

ruffle scarf shrinkage

Here are the 3 I have done. In the first one you can see the ruffles and then all rolled up looking like hand weights.

ruffle scarves ruffle scarves rolled up

I also taught a slipper class last week end. I couldn’t find my sample s so had to quickly make a couple. I made little boots for my grandson. her they are stuffed with plastic and covered in some pantyhose ready for the washer and the finished pair.

Fynn boots redy for washer Fynn boots finnished

I tried the heart shaped template. It was on the Forum but I can’t find it right now.

my slippers ready to felt my slippers

They are not fulled enough but I needed to stop to have them dry in time. It was good really because they could feel the difference between Fynn’s fulled slippers and mine. I will stuff them and put them through the washer. I am sorry to say I forgot to take any pictures at the class.

And lastly another inspiration picture. The leaves are now starting to fall so now the ground and the trees  match and it is time to play in the leaves.

falling leaves Fynn likes them.

Fynn in the leaves