felt vessel – Page 2 – Felting and Fiber Studio

First Quarter Challenge

February 16, 2016 shepherdessann Comments 23 comments

They say great minds think alike. We all seem to have decided on a book resist. I started with 3 stacked circles. I had been going to cut 2 of them in half and attach them with duct tape but after reading Terries tutorial I grabbed a needle and thread and made a few stiches to hold it together.

The first thing I made was long snakes leaving the ends fluffy.

Then I made 6 fiber circles. I used about 2 grams of fiber in each of 3 layers for each circle.

then I added them to the stacked resist. I did remember what everyone said about having a hard time where the resists meet at the top and bottom and paid particular attention to that.

next was the long snakes.

I put those on near the top of the circles. The next part is not very interesting. rub, rub rub, roll, roll, roll. Then cut the hole in the top. I decided the inside wasn’t felted as much as I wanted so I left the resist in and went back to rolling.

after it was all dry I had planed to weave the long snakes around it in an artistic design. Unfortunately weaving really needs to have a odd number of so that didn’t work. I needed to find a solution.

I did these

or maybe turn it on its head?

Last night I took it in to a guild meeting and challenged them to do something with it.

We had artistic twisting, plant hanger, a fancy bun cover, and a bag. We had a great time and lots of laughs, The conclusion was that had I made a great new party game.

Vessel and Pod

February 11, 2016 zedster66 Comments 22 comments

I don’t think I’ve ever used a flat resist for a vessel like this before. The idea was to make it as an example of using resists to take to the felting class at the well-being centre, but before I’d even finished the layout, I knew it’d be too much for us to do in a couple of hours. I used lots of the Gotland locks from Zara, and decided to work inside out, so I laid these on the resist first. I used a couple of layers of Gotland fleece, then some cheaper ‘Scottish Grey’ I’d bought from wollknoll. Between the Gotland and Scottish fleece I added some more Gotland locks around the top. There is a bit of a ridge inside, but I thought it turned out really well:
The other side:

Here’s a couple of close ups of the locks around the top:

I used lots of different ones:

A closer look at the bottom, the locks felted in really nicely but still kept lots of character:

When we did use resists at the well being centre, they didn’t quite turn out as planned. Because I had ‘vessels’ in mind and got out all the natural wools, I wasn’t thinking properly, so I cut a resist for a glasses case based on using Merino like I usually do, so when thick layers of English 56s, Finnish and Corriedale were used, it barely shrunk and turned into a small sturdy bag! I was running out of time, so only did 3 layers on my bird pod, so it ended up shrinking a lot more widthways and became very tall and narrow! One of the members in the group liked it though so hopefully the blue tits in her garden do, too 🙂

Yarny Vessel

December 12, 2012 zedster66 Comments 17 comments

A few years ago, I wanted to make a felted vessel for my girlfriend, I had an image in my mind of how I wanted it to be, and I wanted it to be ‘perfect’, so it took a few attempts, but I was finally happy.

I used two of the practice vessels to make some ‘woolly vessels’ by needle felting locks onto them. One of them was this white vessel. I needlefelted locks of Angora, Alpaca, Wensleydale, Bluefaced Leicester and Kid Mohair onto it, then put it through the washer to make sure the locks were secure, and because a lot of them were unwashed locks.

Another one I made was this bluey green one, it reminds me of something from under the sea or around the coast. This has hand dyed locks of Angora, Alpaca, Wensleydale, Devon, Bluefaced Leicester and Kid Mohair. And I used texturey wools like dyed Icelandic and scoured lambswool to secure the locks.

Around the same time, I had the idea for making a really colourful texturey vessel, by needlefelting pieces of handmade yarn and wool twists onto one of my spare practice vessels. I had quite a large stash of handmade yarn and often made wool twists for projects so thought it probably wouldn’t take much longer than the other two had. I was wrong! 🙂 It took a lot longer… about 3 years off and on. I probably could have finished it sooner, and I did have phases where I would make up twists and add them, or sit spinning yarn for a few hours then cut it into pieces when it was dry and spend a few hours needling pieces onto the vessel but it never seemed to get any closer to being done! This last weekend, not feeling well enough to tackle my half finished business plan, I decided to try my hardest to finish the vessel. I got out all my left over yarn, stashes of wool blends and a drop spindle and set to work making a big pile of wool twists and a long length of plied yarn to cut up. I also got out my box of very thin felt offcuts and wet, rubbed and rolled some of those to add too. I didn’t want to wet the yarn and wait while it hung and dried, so after snipping it into lengths I wet and rubbed one end to ‘seal’ it and stop it unravelling. After needling all the pieces into the bare parts of the vessel, I finished off around the top, tidying it up and securing the loose fibres. And this is the result:

And then I put it into an old pillow case and put it in the washing machine with a normal load 🙂 It looked like this:

I unsquashed it and gave it a few shakes and spins, ran my fingers loosely through the twists and yarns (there’s a few strips of silk and organza in there too) then sat it on a tub to dry overnight. And this is what it looks like this morning: