rosiepink

Happy Christmas! :)

Annie

We made a hearth surround for our decorations. Our little spruce tree is still too tiny and it's little branches can't take the weight! We used some twisted hazel branches from the garden, and tied them together with garden string.  Our hazel tree trunk split in two this summer and we had to cut it right back to try to save it. I kept the branches because they looked like they would be handy for something!  It looks lovely with the stove lit and the fairy lights twinkling.

It's not felt or textiles related but thought I'd show it off anyway! :)

Mum and I wish everyone a very happy Christmas and a healthy, happy, creative new year xx

 

 

 

Colourful Handfelted Christmas Decorations

Annie

Recently I have had some fun making a selection of Christmas decorations, prompted by the Felting & Fibre Forum 4th Quarter Challenge.

I got a bit carried away and during the process my desk was a big colourful mess!

My previous 2 posts have shown a couple of the things I made and here are some photos of the rest of it.  Most of the explanatory text is over on the forum so that it's not duplicated both here and there.   It's mostly very simply made from pieces of handmade felt, backed with fabric for stiffness, and then all stitched together.  All in rather unusual colours! :)

I also had several more ideas including modifying some old shop bought decorations, and I wanted to make some oversized wired holly and some other things including revisiting felted letters to spell out various greetings, so these may be things to save for next year as time is flying now!  I hope you have enjoyed some seasonal crafting projects too.

From Holly Leaves to Landscapes

Annie

Following on from the previous post...My first idea for a seasonal project for the Christmas decoration challenge had been to make a wreath of holly leaves.  It didn't work out as planned but I thought I'd share the felt I made because I rather like it!  The wreath idea was inspired by my Christmas Podding project that I made a few years back. I really liked the wired felt holly leaves and I thought it would be fun to make a big bunch of them to create a wreath.  All of the leaves would be wired and then twisted into shape.  I wanted to make the leaves with a base of green but with lots of other more unusual colours throughout to make it a bit quirky.  I could picture it in my minds eye so I picked some colours in Merino, starting with greens then added pink and turquoise etc.  I also added some bits n bobs like white cotton nepps (possibly to be frost / snow?), and some other types of wool for a bit of texture:

Once I'd laid the fibres out I added some fabric pieces and yarns and it was looking pretty good for what I wanted:

However, after felting I realised that maybe I had used more dark green than I needed, and not enough of the other colours, so while I really liked the felt it wasn't what I wanted for the leaves that I had imagined.  I cut one leaf out but changed my mind.  This is the piece of felt:

It might not be what I had planned exactly but it's a great piece of felt with lots of interesting sections.  That's the fab thing about a big piece of decorative felt is that often when cropped into smaller pieces new images appear.  There are some really lovely passages in this felt, which to me resemble the countryside landscape.  I love to visit Yorkshire when I can and some of these remind me of the hills, streams, sheep, rocks etc.  Can you see abstract landscapes in these pieces or is it just me?!  

 

I did end up making some more holly leaves in the end from new pieces of felt that I made from blue, pink and yellow Merino fibres, with the addition of various fabrics and yarns.  I made a wreath from them but didn't have time to wire them and go over the top with it.  I'll add that to the project list for next year!  Here are the leaves, I'll post about the wreath later, as my posts get way too long!

  

Starry Night Hand Felted Table Runner

Annie

Despite good crafting intentions, I don't always get round to making things for Christmas because time flies so fast and I miss it!  This year I thought I'd make more effort to get organised and the 4th quarter challenge on the felting and fibre forum, to make a Christmas decoration, gave me an extra push to do it, and I'm glad I did as I ended up having a lot of fun!  

The trouble, though, is once I started thinking about it I ended up with too many ideas and I fiddled and faffed for days playing with this, that and the other.  I ended up making several things, the first being this starry sky themed table runner / mat:

 

The table mat idea came about to protect the sideboard in my hallway from all the various keys, mugs of tea and other random things that get deposited there.  

I had all sorts of colour and pattern ideas during the summer when I first thought about making one, but now it's winter I decided on an inky dark blue sky background with white stars.  I had made a sample using Merino for something else ages ago in blue with white stars so I thought I'd use that idea but scale it up bigger for a seasonal mat design.  I laid out 2 layers of white as a base in a traditional way, then pulled out the blue fibres in a loose puffy way to let the white under layers migrate through a little more:

I'm not sure what size the dry layout was but after wet felting it is 35cm x 65cm.

For the stars, I used a sheet of very thin white prefelt that I had made earlier in the year for some other purpose that I can't remember! I wetted down the base fibres then I cut the stars out freehand and laid them in a design on top:

Unfortunately the stars didn't felt in properly to the blue fibres.  I realised I must have used the duff batch of white for that felt that has got mixed in with my stash.  It has given me problems on a couple of occasions but I'm not sure which batch of fibres it is so it's a lottery!

However, I liked the mat and wanted to save it so I tried several ideas out on samples, like painting, needle felting and machine embroidery that might hold the fibres in place better. I also toyed with adding hand embroidery for extra decoration.

In the end, being impatient I ran it under the embellisher needles and it worked rather well! I might do more to it another time, and experiment with the paint etc but in the meantime I think it looks OK with just the needle felting, and it will protect the sideboard from household debris for now!

A great side effect of the white felt not felting in was that after I had used the embellishing machine to fix it, and firmly felt the fibres in, I turned the mat over and noticed that the back looked pretty good! It has made it so that it's reversible. A good result from what was a failure!

I like the effect of the of the needling showing through on the reverse, it looks almost like printmaking, so I will put that one in the ideas bank for future use :)

 

We wish you a Merry Christmas ....

.... and a Happy New Year!

Lyn

This year the snow people wanted me to show them as carol singers, but the young ones soon lost interest.

I had great fun positioning the snow people for their photo and I hope the diorama makes you smile :)

I made the snow people from white merino wool in my usual way - as shown in this post - then I made their hats and scarves with pieces of scrap felt, stitching and knitting.

To complete the scene I made the song sheets using free printable sheet music that I folded into mini paper planes, then I spent an enjoyable hour of "cutting and sticking" to make the lamp post from lots of odds and ends including black paper, black card, a cocktail stick that I painted black, a long white bead, a black round bead, and a piece of white fancy yarn.

Annie and I hope you have a peaceful holiday season and a creative new year!