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Tag: wet felting

Bits and Bobs

Bits and Bobs

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I made a couple of felt pieces to use as lampshade covers not so long ago, one of them wasn’t nice at all, it looked okay, but it was made with Shetland, and what I think is Corriedale (from a bag of Botany Lap Waste) and now I understand why people shiver at wool! I used that one for the shade, but couldn’t get a decent photo. The other piece I made is going to be a removable ‘skirt’ when I think of how to attach it. It’s a bit crinkled because it ended up under a pile of things!

A while ago we made pouches using resists at the well being centre. I think I might rewet this and reshape it as a bottle cover:

We’re going to start learning some techniques for making felt landscape pictures at the Well Being Centre. After we were talking about it I showed the group the picture Tracey blogged about not so long ago:

I also showed some of Marion/Blyth Whimsies gorgeous floral pieces: https://www.flickr.com/photos/24232165@N03/albums/72157681820827174 I don’t think we’ll be making anything on that scale though! To get started we made some really simple landscapes, I like doing these, they’re usually around postcard size:

I made it clear that landscapes aren’t something I’m particularly good at or experienced with, Mine are usually simple like that above or very abstract like this:

But, I know fibres and effects and techniques, so we’re going to start with those and build up the skills to make more adventurous pieces. We’re going to start with making simple things like wool strands and twists:

Wool kebabs … I recently read something that when small rolags (usually of cotton) are made, they’re called ‘punis’. But I think these are even smaller, and I’ve been calling them ‘kebabs’ – because they’re rolled around a kebab stick-for so long it’s just stuck now!

Handspun yarn, singles, plied, mixed with fibres or commercial yarns etc:

Coils and Spirals:

We’re probably going to buy some prefelt, but we’ll make our own too:

And combine all the things:

And add things like leaves and flowers, nepps, fibres etc. And hopefully, we’ll all be landscape experts before long! Luckily, we have a group member who is amazing at hand-stitching and embroidery and our very own Free Motion Embroidery expert so we can embellish on the sewing machines too 🙂

A Zed Inspired Book Cover

A Zed Inspired Book Cover

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I bought myself a new sketch pad that is in a book form rather then a flip pad. I decided I wanted to cover it in the way that Zed had last shown us here project-updates-2/

I am lazy and wanted to get to the decorating so I started with a piece of white prefelt. I didn’t take a picture of it but you can see it in the picture of attaching the cord farther down. This is the overall piece just wet down.

Here is a closer look at the flowers and the little resist I put in for a pocket. I want to be able to put a pencil eraser nd pencil sharpener in the cover. I used some of my handspun for the stems.

The area with the pocket will be cut off and sewn in to make the sleeve on one side of the book cover.

I flipped it over and started to layout the purple for the inside when I realised I hadn’t added the cord yet.

I made a hole and stuck it in.

Then I decorated the inside of the flap. I am not sure how this will work out but we will see.

Now all I have to do is find time to do the felting and sewing. Not sure where half the summer has gone already. How much felting have you done this summer?

Funky Vase Cover

Funky Vase Cover

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I had purchased a ball of yarn at a clearance sale. It’s a combination of wool, acrylic and nylon and has a bit of sparkle to it. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do with it until I found an orange vase I had laying around.

I made a resist then covered it with with two layers of odds and end batts with similar colors.

Then came the fun – wrapping the yarn around the resist in lines.

It was a bit fiddly flipping from side to side and then at the top and bottom to keep the yarn from falling off.

When I was satisfied I was ready to felt it, I went slow and easy checking frequently to make sure it was all staying together.  I purposely didn’t leave spaces between the lines thinking the yarn would felt to the backing and itself.

As you can see it’s a bit lumpy in spots and didn’t shink as much in height, so it’s a little taller than the vase.

I did a little needle felting to straighten things out and attach a few stray yarns.  But I was happy with the wavy texture.  I did also have to shave it a bit.  Then I had to decide what to do with it.  Here is one use:

I’m sure I could also use it for flowers, paint brushes or a number of other things. What would you use it for?

Small Nuno Pieces

Small Nuno Pieces

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I thought some of the recent scarves I’ve bought might make nice panels for the front of bags. I usually do a few samples when I get new fabrics, see how they felt at various sizes with different thicknesses of wool. This first piece attached ‘better’ at this size than it had when I tried a narrower strip. I think it’s viscose:

It has a nice texture:

These next 4 pieces are all silk. I wasn’t sure which colour of Merino to use with this, it was a toss up between ‘Mink’ and ‘Catkin’–a pale yellow. On its own it looks beige, so I chose ‘Mink’ , but now it looks more cream in colour so I might try a sample with the pale yellow 🙂

This was a difficult one to colour match too. I wasn’t sure whether to go for green or pinky purple. I decided on green, I didn’t have quite the right shade, but got as close as possible:

I used another piece from the same scarf, it might have been a panel from the bottom of the previous sample, this part definitely seemed like it’d be better with a pinky/purple shade. I chose the closest light purple I had, ‘Orchid’ I think, and used a bright pink underneath:

It’s funny how something looks a certain colour until you match it with something, then you see different colours more. This looked very pink, so I used a Salmon base, after felting, the beige seems very similar to the first piece and the lilac/pink/purples look similar to the previous piece. Maybe they’d work together in strips?

This is one of my favourite pieces. I think the scarf I tore it from is Polyester. This attached better than a narrower sample I tried too, it turned out much better than I thought. I tried to match the colours of Merino to the colours of the stripes on the scarf so they werent dulled by migration:

It has a really nice texture too:

Have you bought or tried out any new fabrics lately?

Project Updates

Project Updates

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I showed a piece of green plaid-inspired felt a few weeks ago. I made it to use for a notebook cover with front flap and incorporated cord/tie. I finished that a couple of days ago. This is how it looks on the book with the cord wrapped around:

This is what it looks like on the inside without the book in:

I promised photos of the finished purses, and surprisingly, I have them! This is the bluey/purpley ones, and I also made a small simple case with a green plaid offcut:

And here are the finished pink purses:

I liked the green felt with Bluefaced Leicester locks so much I made a blue one:

I used more embelleishments on this one though: silk carrier rods, silk paper, viscose paper, cotton gauze, unravelled novelty yarns.

The shiny white patch at the top is viscose paper, the blue rectangle in the bottom right is silk paper:

A BFL lock:

I feel like I could sleep for a month now, and if I never have to do blanket stitch again this year, I won’t mind!

The Hummingbird and the Tiger Lily

The Hummingbird and the Tiger Lily

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I know a lot of people are experiencing different seasons around the world.  Here in the U.S. summer has finally arrived.  One of the things I always look forward to is seeing the hummingbirds fluttering around my flowers.

While the hummingbirds haven’t been seen yet, I decided to make my own.  I started with making a base with Domestic 56 batts, then I added a thin layer of batts and silk hankies as a background felting it slightly and letting it dry.

I decided to make the bird and flower in three dimension.  I shaped the bird first by doing some needle felting and putting it in place then covering it with handmade prefelt and silk hankies. I did a little needle felting on the wings to get the detail of the wings.  The beak was made like a spike and attached before the final wet felting.

The Tiger Lily petals and stamens and stem were made from prefelt and again the stamens were added right before the final wet felting. I used little resists under the petals and needle felted the stamens to stay in place.

A little plastic wrap around the stamens  and beak to keep them from felting to the petals or background.

The felting was slow and I tried not to get it too hard. I wanted a soft look.

I added more needle felting for detail.

Here are several different angles to see the dimension.

Looking at it from above it doesn’t show the dimension.  I may have it framed in a shadow box.  What do you think?

Latest Nuno and Bookcover

Latest Nuno and Bookcover

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I made the last of my nuno strip pieces into panels for a bag. It was this yellow piece:

I used various types of fabric–cotton, viscose, silk, suspected silk, so got various textures:

I liked these two strips next to each other, they showed the very different way felting/shrinkage affected them:

I used some of the spare offcuts from the orange piece to make up the panels:

I made the Green felt which I piled with BFL locks into a notebook/diary cover. The pictures look a bit weird because I had a small patch of desk out of the sunlight when I was taking photos, but it must have been shadier at one end so, to me, they look upside down!

Here’s the other side:

This is the inside without the book:

And this is the outside without the book:

I’ve finally got the buttons and buttonholes on nearly all the purses from a few weeks ago, so hopefully, I’ll have those to show next time 🙂

New Bags, New Felt, New Braiding

New Bags, New Felt, New Braiding

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I remembered to take photos of the blue/green bag I was in the process of making, though it really doesn’t look too much different to the separate panels 🙂 This is the front, or more blue side:

And this is the back/more green side:

I also made a smaller bag with some of the green pieces. Side 1:

Side 2:

I felt the urge to make something multi coloured after all the matching colour themes. I bought some of World of Wool’s dyed scoured BFL ages ago and had never used it, so I thought I’d add a few colourful bits to the top of a piece I’d laid out with various green shads of Merino. I might have got a bit carried away with the locks, and dyed viscose, oh, and dyed silk throwster’s:

I like colourful and shiny, so can never resist braiding when I see it! I bought these last week:

You can see the shine on an angle:

2017 Second Quarter Challenge

2017 Second Quarter Challenge

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At the beginning of this quarter, Ann had posted about this quarters challenge theme being early Celtic.

https://feltingandfiberstudio.com/2017/03/31/second-quarter-challenge-3/

I thought a lot about it and had several ideas, but wasn’t sure I could pull them off.  One of them was a pod with spirals.  Lyn got to it before me, but of course as she said, everyone does things differently.  So, I did.

I had some Llama yarn I hand dyed years ago in several colors.  I decided to use that for the spirals.  I made a little bit larger pod than usual in order to accommodate the design.  I laid one layer of Merino on each side, then two layers of Corriedale and a final layer of Merino.  I felt this would give the pod some substance.  Here is the start of the topside design.

Full design wetted down.

Bottom (I ran out of turquoise so I used yellow.)   I had actually had a yellow spiral on the bottom, but forgot to flip it over before starting the topside design so it ended up being cut out.

I did a lot of rubbing to get the design to stay, but the Llama was not cooperating.   It was felting to itself and not the Merino.  Frustrated, I let it dry out then needle felted the design in place.  That did the trick, but the Llama shed everywhere and blurred the design.

I tried shaving and shipping tape it but wasn’t helping.  So, I grabbed my tweezers and embroidery scissors and sat for an hour pulling long hairs out of the design.  There is still more I could have pulled out but goal was to get the black to look black and set off the design.

Much better.

I kept looking at the pod thinking it was out of shape, but it finally occurred to me it was an optical illusion because of the design.

As for the Llama, I thought I had used it before and if I did I didn’t remember it being problematic.  I don’t think I’ll be using it again.

Have you done the challenge yet?  You can post your work on the forum any time, but we’ll be announcing the next challenge soon.

Project Updates

Project Updates

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I remembered today that I haven’t shown the rest of the money purses or the notebook cover I was working on a few weeks ago. These are the purses opened up:

And this is what they look like closed:

I’ve added blanket stitch around all the purses now, but they still need buttons and button-holes. This is how the book cover looks from the front, with a notebook inside:

This is how it looks from the back:

I took a couple of photos without the notebook in, this is what the inside looks like:

And this is the front and back together:

And while I was looking for those photos, I came across some felt I made for another book cover. I wanted a cover with the tie incorporated in the design.

Once I tried the felt on a notebook, I realised it wasn’t quite wide enough, so I made another piece to cut the back cover panel out of:

I’ve only got as far as cutting the felt to size so far.