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Tag: intermediate felting class

Two samples finished and some Canadian Weather

Two samples finished and some Canadian Weather

Before talking about felt, I just wanted to share with our friends who have mild winters. It is March here in Central Canada, and there is very little snow left. But as I said, it’s March, and March is a fickle month.  This is what I woke up to last Saturday.

15cm of snow on a table March 29 snowfall.

Followed by freezing rain overnight Sunday.

ski powl braking through freezing rain on top of snow. March 30, freezing rain on top of snow.

Do not be feeling sorry for me. This is fairly normal here. We expect it, but I am envious of you sitting out in your gardens enjoying the spring flowers.

Now some felt. I finished up the pink sample for the book-resist workshop. I finished the pages 2 different ways just to show them. I think it might look nice with a light inside.

         pink, round book resist with fat and flat fins. pink, round resist closed end.

I made a second sample using a football shape. It is smaller.

football shaped book resist

The resist was fiddley to get out because I didn’t want a hole in it. So, didn’t want to cut a hole in the end.

football shaped resist with gold fibre on it and hole cut to take resit out.

After removing the resist, I sewed up the hole.

whole sewn up after removing the resist. Stitching up the hole
stitching after finishing the felting and fulling. Stitching after fulling.

Here is how it looks finished. I am really pleased with it. The stitching was resistant to being pulled out, but I did get it out.

finished piece

I may have to make another one.   I may just have to stitch on this one. I have the wool ready for the next sample. I hope to have it done for you to see next time.

felting techniques class

felting techniques class

Sorry For the late post, I thought today was tomorrow.

Last weekend I had four ladies for a techniques class. This is not an advanced class, but it is also not a beginner class. People had to already know how to make felt.

First, we did inclusions. They used a piece of thicker prefelt and elastics to enclose some large glass beads (the kind they are used in the bottom of vases for decoration) and a felt ball.  Then laying out a base and top they enclosed some glass beads, a felt ball, a circular resist with a hole and a squashed tasimo pod with a resist over it.  Sorry, I forgot to grab the camera until they were at the rubbing stage. Part way through they cut some holes on top of the beads and pod.

When they were laying out I had them cover a pebble with 2 layers in different colours. I had them put a resist on top of the first layer and wrap it with the second colour. They popped them into a piece of nylon stocking to contain it all and make it easier to felt. You can see the first sample on the table in the picture below. They mostly felted the pebbles during lunch while eating and chatting. Once it was mostly done they cut a hole in the top and after healing the cut edge removed the resist and cut a smaller hole to reveal the pebble.  Similar to the one below that I made a few years ago.

felted pebble

Next was cracked mud. I had them layout two 10×10 pieces( top and bottom) they added painter’s tape in 2 widths and then added the top

Naturally, because it was a wet felting class, they had to do some rolling.

I had them cut the mud sections at different stages of felting, prefelt, mostly done and done. so they could see how that affects it. I think they could have used more felting before the fulling but we had limited time and had to move on to book resists. I had them make a four-page book resist using half circles. they managed to get it laid out and wet down but then we were out of time so they had to take them home to finish.

3 students sent me pictures of the finished pieces. The first one she manipulated to look like origami.

And this one, She says it needs more fulling but wanted to get me the picture.

The third student got creative and combined her samples into a tea cozy.

All in all a good class. I just wish I could squeeze more techniques in. But no matter how fast you want to be felting takes time.