rosiepink

Textured Felt

The Fingerpost

Lyn

In August of last year I made a textured felt sample, shown below, by sprinkling chopped up bits of fulled felt onto a bed of loose white merino fibres, then felting it all together (blog post).

I liked the result and thought it could be useful in a textured picture, so I chopped up a few more pieces, had a think whilst snipping away, and jotted down a few ideas... but that's as far as I got.

Fast forward eight months and a new challenge from The Felting and Fiber Forum has been announced - to make something using off-cuts from your scrap-box and/or finish a UFO that's been hanging around too long.

My overflowing felt scrap-box (Annie has one too!)

Last August, one idea I'd jotted down was to make a picture of the fingerpost at Lands End, Cornwall, using the chopped up bits of felt to give an impression of the background. I still liked the idea, so after laying out a bed of white merino fibres, I scattered bits of scrap felt, of appropriate colours, on the top of the loose fibres to represent the sky, horizon, sea, hill, beach and flora.

This is how it looked after felting:

I dug around in the scrap-box and found enough white off-cuts to make the fingerpost.  I hand-stitched the place names, cut out the shapes, then stitched them to the background.

The finished piece is approx 50cm x 34cm (19.5" x 13.5") and the angled photo below shows the texture well.

We've had so many lovely holidays in Cornwall that working on this piece has me looking forward to the summer!

 

Experimenting with Needle Felting

Annie

It's still a work in progress but I've done a little bit on my Lulworth / Arish Mell project.  I cut up a couple of the small pieces of handmade felt I made and layered them up along with some dry fibres, yarn and scrim then needle felted it all together to make a new small piece of felt.  I stitched a few details on such as some horizontal big stitches to represent the knee-achingly steep steps on the the walk from Lulworth and down to Arish Mell!

It is only small at 15cm x 20cm so I could make a set of 3, or work a bigger piece next. 

Below are some of the dry pieces laid out.  I quite liked it like that, nice and simple.

 

Below is the picture cropped in Photoshop.  I often find it hard to choose if I like a nice neat straight edge or the natural edge of the felt! 

I haven't finished many things recently as I've been so busy, but I have been playing when I do get time and trying lots of little sample ideas out like stitching yarn through scrim then felting it, felting in knitting, needle felting scrim etc.  Fun!

I'm off on holiday soon and had to empty my camera and phone as they are full up.  I was perusing some of my photos - I take so many of random things! - and I found this rather nice photo of a pineapple. I think he would look rather gorgeous in felt and stitch, perhaps in lots of nice unusual colours.  But he'll have to get in the queue behind the pomegranates and peacocks and other odd ideas :)

How do you organise all of your creative ideas?  Mine all just seem to be having a big bun fight with no order!

 

cracked mud felting technique and a new challenge

Lyn

The first quarter challenge on The Felting and Fiber Forum is to make something using a flat resist, and as I wanted to try something that I hadn't done before, I used Elynn's youtube video that shows how to do the cracked mud technique in wet felting.

The photos above show my first effort (left) and my second effort (right).

I made three layers of merino wool then placed my resist, cut from laminate flooring underlay, on top.

I covered the resist and base layers with three layers of a lighter colour merino wool as I wanted the darker colour to show from under the cracks.  Then I topped the wool with some trilobal nylon fibres and a little white tussah silk top.

I rubbed the wool until it passed the pinch test, then cut out the resist.  It was very fiddly, even with my tongue poking out at the correct angle!  But the effort was worth it. It looked good...until I started to full it.

Now we all know how difficult it is to felt together two pieces of felt that have passed the pinch test don't we? Well not this time!  I had to keep releasing the shapes from the base layer - it's as though they were determined to become one layer - so the edges of the shapes and the surrounding border became a bit ragged. So much so that I had to resort to a bit of fine trimming.  Hence the large gaps instead of tiny cracks. Unfortunately the raggedy border around the shapes was well and truly felted to the background before I could get my little scissors out.

Trimming the shapes was not in the plan, but it has made the dark base show through well, and I quite like it!

So for my second go, I thought I'd use a thinner resist. The laminate flooring underlay is 3mm thick, so it's hard work to felt the cut-out areas because of the depth of the resist. Also, I decided to continue rubbing a long way past the pinch test before cutting the resist out.

I cut a new resist from thick packaging plastic and I rubbed much longer before cutting out the resist, but I still couldn't get the edges of the shapes 'sharp' - there's a little bit of 'raggedy'. However, practice makes perfect and the second go is an improvement on the first.

Subconsciously I must have been thinking of a giraffe when I laid the orange and white down!

 

From Lulworth to Arish Mell, and some accidental landscapes in handmade felt

Annie

During a brief window of sunshine last weekend we took a short walk from Lulworth to Arish Mell and back - we just got back to the pub in time before the rain started. Perfect!

It’s only a short walk (but rather hilly!) and the scenery is beautiful. It got me thinking that I haven’t made a landscape picture recently and when I got home I put my thinking hat on.

I was looking through my felty bits and found the piece of felt pictured above (not sure which way up I like best) that I might use as a starting point for ideas - it is cut from the side of the piece of felt that I made the New Year video from.  It’s sort of an “accidental landscape”.  I love that about felt - from one big piece you can cut it up and make tiny pictures - sometimes they just present themselves. A bit like the little pieces below - I made one sheet of handmade felt to cut letters from then decided I didn’t really like the shade of pink, but the mini landscapes are rather nice :)

 

Anyway, on the walk I took a few photographs but mostly kept my hands in my gloves because while it was sunny it was cold!  Except for walking up Bindon Hill and back up from Arish Mell - that was hot work!

Even if it had been a glorious day there was no time to sketch anything, my husband always walks at 100mph! I might have to go and do the sloooow version on my own at some point and take in more of the detail.  But from what I saw and the photos I did take I thought "From Lulworth to Arish Mell" would be an interesting project to make in handmade felt.

I haven’t really got a plan yet - but I don’t want it to be too literal. And I want to keep it smallish. Just have a play with nice colours and shapes and a hint at what it is. Although that could change.  I’ve just started by making several pieces of pre-felt that I can collage together and cut up and stitch and needle into.  I’d possibly quite like this picture to end up flattish and more like a painting on a canvas than a highly textured piece of felt.  Well, that’s what’s in my mind’s eye, but let’s face it quite often I end up with something else entirely!

 

I was looking through some old bits of felt for inspiration and rediscovered the nice effect you can get from needle felting scrim through from the back of thin felt - I love the little loops, although the photo below (blue) doesn’t show it that well.  It’s a bit like when you’ve played with the tension on the sewing machine.  Also the pink piece is dyed scrim (open weave cotton fabric) on yellow felt.  I love the colour peeping through and the effect it gives the felt. I’ve made 7 pieces of pre-felt so far for my little landscape.  I want to do some more, maybe like the samples below and some almost see through white pieces to layer up.

I'll work on this alongside some other projects and see where it takes me.  A couple of weeks ago I did another fabulous Art Taster painting workshop at the Colour Factory in Winchester (which I’ll write about at some point because there is another felt picture waiting to get out from that!).  During the workshop I was describing my difficulty in focussing on a single project until it is complete because so many ideas keep coming, and I keep getting distracted, and we decided that for me maybe having multiple projects on the go might work better because it can keep things fresh and keep you interested because you are not dedicating all your spare time to one single idea. Let's see!

Here is the painting I did on the day - Pomegranates!  I didn't finish it because I ran out of time, then I decided that I actually really like it unfinished and to do any more work on it would ruin it.  So at least I can count that as a finished project :)

 

Happy New Year! :)

Hello and Happy New Year! 

 

We hope you like our little video - this was our first ever go at making a stop motion film (new year, new challenges!) so it involved a lot of guesswork and a lot of laughs - have you ever tried to balance a camera tripod between your knees while sewing? and then realising once you've finished that you forgot to focus the camera anyway?!

It's not perfect but it was fun to do and we hope to play with this some more - lots of ideas start coming along once you start playing don't they!  

We hope that everyone has had a lovely holiday :) x

 

Sid the Snowman has a Secret

Sid the Snowman has a very important job to do. He helps the Christmas Podding to hide our Christmas chocolates!

He stands 23cm tall (9"), and when he takes off his hat and scarf, he transforms into two bowls.  We're still arguing over who has the small one.

We made two white pods for Sid's body and head (how to make a pod). The large pod's resist had a diameter of 27cm (10.5") and the small pod's resist had a diameter of 17cm (6.5"). His wet felted orange carrot-nose was stitched to his head and his arms were made from beading wire and tinsel.

We made a piece of blue nuno felt from which to cut and stitch a hat and scarf.  The hat was made in the same way as the hat in the previous blog post, but it was larger, so the two parts that made the crown of the hat were stiffened by ironing the nuno felt onto stabiliser.

So after we'd sorted the most important job of all (the stashing of the choccies) we had some present wrapping to do.  One of the rolls of wrapping paper was so thick and pliable that we got distracted and started thinking we could machine stitch it - it got us wondering what we could make with it. As we like to have little gifts on the Christmas dinner table, we made these cute paper stockings to hide them in!

 

 

 

How I made my Snowman Diorama

Lyn

I didn't start out with the aim of making a diorama...I just wanted an image to print onto my Christmas cards! I fancied a snowman for my card picture and the idea just 'snowballed' into a diorama.

From start to finish it took me two weeks, a few hours here and there, because I spent more time thinking things through than actually making!  But to start off I just jumped in and made 6 large, white, round felt beads (how to make felt beads) and I felted them until they were firm but still had a bit of 'give' in them. 

I used a total of 76 grams of white merino wool (just over two and one-half ounces) and I made the beads slightly different sizes so that the largest ones made the base, the medium ones made the bodies and the smaller ones made the heads.

When the white beads were dry, I used strong white thread and a large, sharp needle to sew the bodies together. To make each snowman, I passed a thread through the centres of three beads, but left a gap between each one to enable me to pass two more threads, one either side, and quite close to, the first thread. I left about six inches of thread at each end.  

I tied the threads into a knot at one end, then pulled all the threads together gently from the other end, until the beads compressed into each other a little, then tied them off. The snowmen each stand about 13.5cm tall (5.5").

I wanted the snow-woman to have a necklace of colourful beads, so I made about 50 mini-beads. They varied in size a little as I needed very small ones for around her neck.  It wasn't possible to make them in the same way as a regular bead, so I took just a few fibres of merino wool, messed them up between my fingers, then dry-rolled the fibres between my thumb and fingertips until it looked like a bead.

Then I dipped it into some warm water, made soapy with a little dish-soap, and continued rolling it between my thumb and fingertips until it was firm but with a little give so that I could push a fine needle through it to string it onto fine white thread.  The finished bead shown below was one of the larger ones.

Her hat was made from a circle of thin, handmade felt (how to make flat felt). I hand-sewed running stitches in a circle as shown below - the inner dashed-line circle represents the stitches - then I drew up the thread to form the crown of her hat until it fitted.

Her arms would have been fiddly to make in felt (not impossible but life's too short for that amount of fiddling) so I went into the garden to look for twigs.  I couldn't find any suitable bits of twig so I used beading wire instead.  I cut three lengths, each one approx four times the width of the snow-woman body, then threaded them into a long needle - bending half inch at the ends to keep the wires in the eye of the needle.  I pushed the needle through the centre of the body, then pulled the wires through so that roughly an equal amount stuck out either side. 

I twisted one of the lengths of wire around the other two, then snipped the ends to make 'fingers'.

Mr snowman needed an orange nose, so I made a bead, then when it had just started to hold a round shape, I rolled it back and forth in one direction in the palm of my hand to make pointy ends. I made a small hole, with fine pointed scissors, in the white 'head' bead to put the pointy end of the orange bead in, then I poked around the base of the orange bead with a felting needle to attach it.

The snowman's hat was cut from thin handmade felt (it was a scrap of nuno felt from another project) and stitched together. I cut two circles (circle B was cut out of circle A) and a strip to construct the hat - as shown in the diagram below.

The snowman's scarf is simply a long strip of the same felt knotted around his neck.

The mistletoe leaves were cut from a piece of thin green felt and stitched together, with three white beads made in the same way as the necklace beads, stitched onto the leaves. I made a small thread loop on the back so that I could hook the mistletoe onto the snowman's hand.

Both the snowmen's bottoms were flattened by the pulling up of the threads, but they are lightweight so I decided to anchor them to the diorama base.

If you're squeamish, look away now.

I used a rectangle of white mountboard for the base, and once I'd worked out where I wanted the snowmen to stand, I used dressmaking pins to impale them - worked a treat!

I covered the white mountboard with a thin layer of PVA glue then placed fine tufts of white merino wool on it before putting the snowmen down onto their beds of nails.  Well, that's what I did the second time.  The first time I just covered the board with tufts of merino wool, placed the snowmen, then someone opened a door and the draught blew most of the merino 'snow' onto the floor!

The backboard is a rectangle of black mountboard covered with a gauzy blue fabric printed with silver stars.

I enjoyed making this because of all the little challenges it gave me!

 

Textured blue felt vessel

Lyn

The fourth quarter challenge on the Felting and Fiber Forum is to make something in monochrome.

I dithered about which colour to choose then remembered that I liked the blues I made by carding the primary colour blue with varying amounts of white (photo above).

Ok, so blue is my colour ... but what to make? I rooted through my boxes waiting for inspiration to strike and it didn't take long. I came across this bubbly blue net fabric that Annie had found recently in a charity shop...

...and I instantly pictured in my mind a textured (bubbly) vessel. The solid colours in the blue netting range from mid blue down through to white.

I made an oval resist and planned to cut the top off in a wavy fashion. I used three different blues of merino wool (it was a struggle to stick to just blue - I desperately wanted to add yellow accents) then I placed the net fabric, cut into circles, on the top of both sides.

I started off the felting process slowly and gently so that the wool fibres had time to migrate up through the fabric, then when I removed the resist I fulled the vessel roughly so that the felt fulled with a bubbly texture. I rubbed, shaped and bashed the vessel until I and the surrounding area got completely splattered with soapy water and my arms ached.

Here is the finished vessel and I'm pleased with the watery, sea-sidey effect the fabric gives the felt (the vessel stands approx 28cm/11" tall).

 

Capturing the last days of summer in felt, silk and acrylic paint

Lyn

There's a little patch in my garden where rudbeckias push up through a lacecap hydrangea...

...pretty enough to inspire a picture isn't it?

So I formed four circular layers (16"/41cm diameter) of assorted greens of merino wool to make the base.  I topped it with yellow, pink and lilac loose fibres where I wanted the petals to be, and I used nepps for the centre.  I then cut petal shapes from yellow/orange and blue/pink silk then placed them on top before wet felting it all together.

When it was dry I applied acrylic paints to the petals and the felt directly around them. It's difficult to paint felt with a brush, so instead I used cocktail sticks and a bathroom sponge that I cut so that it had a short, sharp edge to use.

I like the texture created by the puckered silk and the acrylic paint!

 

 

I found a seahorse in my net!

 

Lyn

The piece of 'net-felt' that I made recently didn't get consigned to my samples box - it was too pretty to hide away so I left it out on my table.  

Every time I looked at it I thought of seahorses.  It's probably because I work part-time in a public library where a book called 'Mister Seahorse' by Eric Carle is very popular with the children.

So I threaded up the sewing machine and Sydney the Seahorse was born.  The detail is mostly from free motion machine stitching - a few hand stitches highlight his fin and put a glint in his eye - and tiny white beads give him a seahorsey spine.

The cutting out was a bit fiddly! I stitched him onto a piece of card covered with white fabric then stuck that onto green linen-look card. The wooden frame came from a local charity shop and my husband brightened it up with white paint.  The framed picture size is 27 x 21.5cm (10.5" x 8.5"), Sydney is 17cm (6.5") high, and here he is brightening up the wall.