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Changing the Design of a Nuno Felt Shrug

Changing the Design of a Nuno Felt Shrug

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In the spring I made some shrug jackets using a pattern I saw in a book about making simple garments with your weaving. I don’t weave but I can felt a rectangle instead of weaving it.  You would think that I would read what to do instead of just going from memory but that would have been too easy. I made some nice looking shrugs.

Orange shrug after over dying

They look nice enough but they didn’t really fit as well as I would have liked. They were to puffy at the back so not very flattering. I think the problem is the rectangle they are made from was to wide making the shrug to long.  I decided to change them. I unpicked them and gave them a wash to get rid of all the thread holes.

I folded the top down about 1/3 to create a kimono sleeve. You end up with something that is more like a shawl that doesn’t fall off as you use you hands and go about your day.

If you would like a larger collar you can wear it the other way up.

You could also just sew a line down the edge or just the other direction to have a larger sleeve opening. I like these much better. I hope other people like them too. I am going to my guild exhibition and sale this weekend and I will have them there.  On that note if you are in Ottawa this weekend  Drop by the Glebe Community Center to see what we are up to.

Hat Making Class

Hat Making Class

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I thought a hat making class last saturday. We had a great time and everyone had a wonderful hat at the end. I forgot to take pictures till the end. After a year of blogging you would think I would be used to taking pictures of everything I do. However I do have some pictures from the class I taught last winter. They were given to my by Jan who is in the class. I lost most of my pictures in a computer crash. The hard drive is off hopefully getting my pictures recovered.

Trolley for class materials.

This is my trolley that I use for class. My bins of wool for embellishment and my tub that has the little buckets, pool noodles, bubble wrap, resist material and other odds and sods.

Jan starting to layout of the wool.

Here is Jan starting to cover her resist with wool and the 2 halves of her hat finished and ready to put together.

Laying out the wool for a pill box hat

Here is another student who decided to do a pill box hat in cow print.

 

 

 

 

 

This is a red and white hat with a few embellishments to help it not look so Christmasy.

Red and white hat ready to wet.

Getting the wool wet using a ball browser. It is a bonsai watering tool that felters are using now. It sprinkles the water just where you need it.

 

 

 

Sorry no pictures of the felting everyone was to busy to take pictures. They did some rubbing and then some rolling then some kneading and throwing.

This is Jan’s hat ready to do some shaping.

 

 

 

 

 

The 2 pieces of the cow hat are ready to sew together once they are dry. The sides are a bit floppy with being wet.

Jan modeling her hat form 2 sides. She did more shaping and ended up twisting the tale and inserting inside the brim.

Jan’s hat finished

and now the red and white hat

Red and White hat finished

And last but not least is the picture of my student from last Saturday  wearing their hats

Hat Class Oct. 2012

Everyone had a good time and ended up with a hat that fit them in a style they wanted. Whenever I here someone saying their head is small or large of too round or flat or whatever I always say well come to a class and make a hat tat fits you. The best hat block you have is your own head. So give it a try on your own or in a class make the hat of your dreams.

Making Felted Soap

Making Felted Soap

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I have a show coming up soon and I am almost out of felted soap. They are always popular at Christmas time.

Here you can see some of my bins of small amounts of different colours, the pieces of nylon stocking I use for felting in and the first soap wrapped up in wool.

first a wrap a thin strip of wool around the edge of the soap then roll it up in a wider strip of roving. Next I pic a complementary or contrasting colour to wrap around the soap. I usually do a spiral from one side to the other.

I use small pieces of nylon stocking to put the wool in for felting. It’s the only thing I use nylons for these days. The reason I put the soap and wool bundle in a stocking is to keep it under control. the first thing that happens when you wet the wool is it gets bigger and its hard to keep it all in place.

Here is a soap with some silk added. this is silk roving that is teased apart. I also us pieces of silk hanky to give it a marble like appearance.

I managed to get this far yesterday but I didn’t manage to get them felted. so here is a picture of a different batch all finished. there are 2 with silk hanky on them.

That’ s the way I do it. If you have any questions or tales of soap making tell us about it.

4th Quarter Challenge _ Weather

4th Quarter Challenge _ Weather

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We’ve actually had such a long cold wet winter here in oz that the site of some sunshine is so lovely and with the weather finally starting to warm up I found myself at the beach briefly the other day just taking in the ocean and some warmth, so I thought for this challenge we could felt a piece depicting our own weather no matter where in the world we live, and be it the ocean and sunshine or freezing temperatures with your lovely snow topped mountains, its your seasons.

And just a couple of lovely pictures of our Island in the sun !!

This is a place called the Nobbies were all the little fairy penguins live

Just a gorgeous sunset on the Island, would make a gorgeous felt piece

Looking forward to seeing everyone’s weather challenge to see the difference in our temps right now. Happy Felting and we’d love to see you in our interactive forum where we all love to share some great information or just have a chat, so come along and join in the fun http://www.feltandfiberstudio.com/

Demo at the Fair

Demo at the Fair

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I belong to the Ottawa Valley Weavers and Spinners Guild. Every year we do demos at various fairs and events. This last week end we where at the Carp fair, http://carpfair.ca/ It is a typical fair with rides and concerts but it is in the country so there are horse shows, both western and english, as well as competitions for cattle, pigs and sheep. There are the quilt competitions and other domestic arts and the best corn, squash and forage contests. After you’ve seen all of that and you make it to the back on the fair there is the antique section with old cars and farm machinery on display and being demonstrated. That’s where we are, in a tent with the antiques. We don’t mind, the men who run the machinery are a great bunch. The only other woman we see demonstrating is the blacksmith.

Here are our display tables. You can see tractors through the windows.

 

 That’s our demo loom on the end. Lots of people give it a try. It has some very interesting patterns on it.

Here I am demonstrating  how to make a needle felted sheep. That’s my coffee in the foreground with its wool felt cozy. You will notice I am wearing long sleeves, my felt vest, my wool cape and some fingerless gloves. When we set up in the morning it was about 10 degrees celsius, or 50 fahrenheit. Once the sun came around to shine on me I started to warm up and shed layers. You can just see the tip on my drop spindle on the table. That’s the other thing I demonstrate.

Here are the ladies spinning.

Jan is out guild librarian and she handles the demo loom and is spinning on a road bug spinning wheel. It is designed to fit on the floor in the front of a van so you can spin while your driver whisks you down the highway.

Here is Linda first carding and then spinning from the rolags she made. She has  a Louet copy she bought second hand.

 

Last but not least is Bernadette who has a very pretty wheel but I don’t know what type it is.

We had a great day together. We met lots of new people , we handed out lots of bookmarks about the guilds up coming exhibition and sale.  We answered lots of questions and got a few people interested in joining the guild and learning more about fiber arts. Do any of you belong to a guild or go our demonstrating to promote fiber? I think next  year we should yarn bomb a tractor what do you think?

Just For Fun

Just For Fun

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It’s been quite a while since I made a piece of felt just for the fun of it. And quite a while since I made a piece of felt without worrying about even layers, straight edges, nice corners etc 🙂  So it was a lot of fun making this piece of green felt. I got out all my greeny shades of wool, fabric and fibres and started laying it out.

I started with two plain layers of merino tops, then added a third layer of lots of different greeny shades of merino blended with fibres like plastic, viscose, silk, banana and bamboo. Then I started adding all the other fibres, fabrics and yarns. I unravelled some fancy fibres I had in green, yellow and blue shades.

I used fabrics like organza, silk, tulle and a few shades of cotton gauze

There were a few sparkly bits

And lots of shiny bits too 🙂

What have you been working on just for fun lately?

Felt Bubbles

Felt Bubbles

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A while back I went to a felting friends for a few days fun.  She showed me how to make bubbles and cut them  open to great effect. Here are the pictures of what I did.

First of course I laid out some wool to felt. But these are samples so plain felt won’t do . I added silk threads and a silk square and some silk roving and other wools to see how it would all go. This is the underside.

This is what the top side looks like

Then of course there was the usual rolling and fulling.

rolling rolling rolling

Here they are all finished and ready for the marbles.

The next step is to put marbles in while it is still damp. You pull the felt tightly around the marble and secure it with an elastic and now it is a bubble. We used the elastics they use to put braids in horses tails and manes because they are small, stretchy,  strong and cheap.  You put in as many as you like and what ever sizes you like. You can also use felt balls. the felt balls are good if you want to leave them uncut. Marbles are to heavy for that.

Here they are all tied up.

Felt with marbles tied in to make bubbles

Here they are cut.  I cut the tops off , I cut x’s and star patterns and some I tuned inside out. if you cut more off you see more of the inside and you can stretch them flatter too.

Bubbles cut open

You can see how the underside becomes the inside of the bubbles. These samples started out about 6×8 inches and the finished pieces are about 1.5 by 2.5 inches. They take up a lot of room. I only have 2 of them left my friends dog ate one. I think I will glue them to some leather and make broaches out of them. They are lots of fun to do. I made some wrist cuffs with this method and I will blog about them next week.

What I’ve been up to lately

What I’ve been up to lately

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This week I started thinking about spring. It is coming, so to help throw off the February blahs I made some felt bird houses.

They are made form Romney wool. the original wool is a mix or white and brown that I dyed. you get a really nice variation in colour that way.  These still need their strings to hand them up and I think the big one might end up as a squirrel house.

The other thing I did this week was get 2 new book cases to store wool on. I wanted to get all the dyed wool out so I could see it and get all the breed specific wool out so I could see what I have. I thought it would be lots of room but I still have a bin of mixed colours( not in the picture),   I have my white and black wool in a bin each and that works fine and the Romney batts that are at least in a cupboard.  I also  have 8 or so bags of raw wool to be washed.  I need to find a way to store the bin plus of yarn so I can see what I have. It’s just not working to have it all in bags inside a bin. I would like to get the over the door hangers that have all the little clear pockets for the yarn. I haven’t found them anywhere yet. Oh well it is better than it was so I will just have to be satisfied for the moment.

Before
After
Felting Around the Web

Felting Around the Web

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Felt Along’s Wool Furry Vessel

VunoRad’s New Blog with Wool Paintings (see galleries)

Felted drawstring skirt

Barbara Trafficonte’s Needle Felted Santas

Jagusia’s Felted Tree Ornaments

Christy’s Needlefelted Embellishments on Knit/Fulled Bags, Mittens and Hats

Free Vintage Knitting patterns

Feather and Fan Comfort Shawl

Knitted Pinwheel purse

Crocheted animal sculptures

Crocheted Rope Basket

Chad Alice Hagen’s Stitched Felt Pieces

Annie and Lyn’s Stitched Felt

Interactive Jellyfish Swarm – Origami

A look back at the last year.

A look back at the last year.

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Well time to look back at the year and see what has happened. There was lots of felting  for sale and some teaching along with family, work, farm and farmers’ market. I decide early I wanted to make a nice nuno felt vest for myself. It doesn’t sound very hard thing to do but I never seem to make the time to make things for myself. It took a month to design the resist and find the time to do the felting and I ended up with a not very good-looking vest. As it turns out it was a good thing because it allowed me to become better friends with Linda as she helped me reshape it with her sewing skills. We went on to design jackets for ourselves this summer. I am still working on the jacket, hems on the sleeves and bottom and it needs some form of closure but I haven’t decided what yet.

I managed to try a couple of new shows to sell my work and expand my felting skills with the help from felting friends when we got together for our annual spring fun felting weekend.

One exiting thing that happened was being asked by Ruth to send some felt to her publisher to have its picture taken to be in her new book. So soon I will be able to say I’ve been published. Supporting Ruth while she wrote her book was a real pleasure and an eye opener as to what is involved in getting a book put together.

Starting the new blog and forum with friends from around the world has been fun and hectic as we decided to do this at the busiest time of the year. It really is amazing how the internet has made it possible meet like-minded people, make friends and take on projects with people you may never meet in person and otherwise wouldn’t have met at all. I feel very lucky indeed. Now I need to have a good long think about what I want to get done this coming year.

Happy New Year everyone,

Ann