Felting and Fiber Studio

I have had this idea on my to do list for a while so I was glad to give it a try. I have seen several different ideas of felting on a stick or piece of driftwood and wanted to give it a try. Then I am planning on adding further embroidery to give the “moss” more details.

I have a bunch of driftwood from my friend Deb so this is another way to use it. I pulled a bunch of different green wool from my stash and mixed it by hand. I suppose since this is all made from my stash, this qualifies for the 4th quarter challenge too!

I then used my hand carders to card the colors together but I didn’t want it to be a solid green. I just did a rough card to mix the greens slightly.

Then on to wrapping the wool around the end of the stick. I wrapped it diagonally with one layer, tacked it down with a bit of quick needle felting and then wrapped another layer in the opposite diagonal direction. I then began squeezing and rolling the stick around on a ridged surface before I wet it down getting some air out of the wool. I think if I had wet the stick first, that might have helped with wrapping the wool a bit tighter around the stick. I’ll try to keep that in my brain if I do this again.

Then I wet felted the wool by rubbing and then rolling the stick wrapped in a towel. I also did a bit of “bashing” the stick but had to be careful not to break off any of the wood bits.  This is how it looks now. I am planning on adding a variety of hand stitching to give more texture. I also might cut back the felt in some areas to allow the wood to show through. I haven’t tried stitching on this type of surface so it might be a bit of challenge. But I’ll just give it a go and see how it turns out. Do you have any suggestions for particular stitches or how best to handle the stitching? I’d love to hear your thoughts.