Wet Felting A Big Colourful Vase of Flowers

Last year I started laying out this big picture of a lively, fun vase of flowers using fibres, fabrics, yarns, prefelts, and all sorts of colourful fibre supplies... but my house moving date was fast approaching so around August I realised I had to pack it away unfinished to focus on packing up crockery and clothes instead!

I am temporarily working in a bedroom at the new house and slowly unpacking my crafting stash as best as I can into a smaller space!  I rediscovered my Work In Progress a few days ago, tightly rolled up in bubble wrap and paper.  This is the stage it was at when I stopped to roll it up to move:

The layout is 70cm x 95cm.  It had mostly survived the move, save for a little bit of movement - and I’ve enjoyed finishing it before I wet felt it. I left it on the table for a couple of days, so I could add, remove and fiddle with bits here and there with fresh eyes.  The next photo shows the view from above the table while I stood on a chair to ponder it after adding lots of bits, hmmm, still more to go at this point!:

Along with it I had packed up all the supplies that I had gathered while making it and they filled ten 35cm x 45cm storage bags!  As always where I was working - the desk, and the floor! -  had been covered in fibres, fabrics, yarns and felty bits so there was a lot of things to stuff into bags! I'm finding all sorts in those bags that I thought I'd lost!

Here is the finished layout:

And some details:

I hadn’t initially planned to make a flowers picture - I had intended to create a fibre version of a mark-making and doodling exercise like you might do with pencils and paints, only with fibres instead.  I had laid out the plain background to work on but once I started putting down yarns, fabrics and fibres I started to think “ooh it’s flowers!”, so went with it :)    That’s part of the fun of creative activity for me, once I start working I never really know where I’ll end up!

So the next job is the wet felting process, and to hope it goes well!  I want to felt it enough so it holds together and everything adheres, but not too much to completely flatten it to a pancake!