rosiepink

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.

 

 

 

 

Making Felt Samples

 

Lyn

Never underestimate the power of experimentation and the making of samples.  It can lead to new ideas - maybe not straight away but perhaps later, when you're rummaging through your samples box for inspiration!

Yesterday I was cutting some shapes from yellow, blue and pink tutu net and the little pile of net scraps were beautiful.  As the scraps layered up the colours changed - for example the pink overlapping the blue made a pretty purple.

I know that a single piece of net will get trapped by wool fibres, but I wondered if the net scraps would get trapped by wool fibres if there were several pieces one on top of the other.  It's at that point that the wondering becomes experimentation.  

I made up four layers of white merino wool and scattered the net scraps on it, but there was a bit of space left so I decided to snip up a scrap of fulled felt and lay the tiny pieces alongside - I wondered if the pieces of felt would sink into the white merino and become flat or if they would stay 'lumpy'.

Here's the experimental layout...

...and in close-up.

Here it is after felting.

I was delighted to see that the white wool fibres did migrate right up through all the layers of net as you can see in the photo below..

...and the resulting 'net-felt' was very pretty.  Below is an angled shot showing the texture.

And the fulled felt scraps didn't sink into the white merino, but made a beautiful texture.

I don't have any immediate plans for using the results of this experiment but I have some pretty felt to look at in my sample box and one day I may get a lightbulb moment from it.

 

some teeny tiny felted and stitched pictures

 

 

Bottoms Up!  Wine....another of my favourite subjects :)

Annie

I made this little picture for my Grandad Roy's birthday card.  He likes his wine (as do I!).

I've had this little sample sitting in my "pile of stuff" for a while - I think it was from when I was trying out different silks and fancy fabrics to make fish with - and it struck me that it looked a bit like a wine bottle.

So I used this idea as the basis for my picture and laid out a small background in merino then snipped some (rather too thick, almost impossible to felt in) sari silk into wine bottle (ish) shapes.

 

I like the way it disintegrated a bit during felting.  It gave it movement. A lot of that was lost when I sewed it unfortunately but I had to stop the bits from coming off as it was for a card not a piece of rarely touched wall art.

 

 After felting, still wet

 

I really love the happy accidents carefully planned details..ahem... of feltmaking - especially in this picture the shape of the champagne bottle sort of appeared on its own then I just decorated it with a bright red labelly scarf.

 

 

I keep thinking I must scale back the detail in my card making - I think this one ended up taking nearly 6 hours. Way too long, but I really really enjoyed it so I don't suppose it matters, the house and stuff can wait :)

 

 

  

 

 

It's approx 13cm x 11cm.

 

I also made a teeny tiny little pic to make my friend's birthday card - it's only 4cm square.

 

And look what happened.  Does this happen to anyone else? Complete chaos for a tiny tiny little picture!  It's a bit like when my friends turn up with a tiny baby and eight great big bags.  Seems excessive!

 

 

I just can't help it.  Maybe I've got toooooo much stuff.  Is that possible?  You can see the tiny picture I was working on to the left (and then the mountain of stuff that spewed out everywhere as I was rummaging for bits n bobs.  And when will I learn to use a bin as I sew?!

 

The timer is for brewing my cups of tea.  When I get engrossed in making things a few minutes turns into hours before I know it.  By setting the timer for 3 minutes I can (almost) guarantee I won't end up with a cup of mud.  Except when I switch it off and forget that it ever beeped.

 

To make the card I cut a piece from this picture...

 

 

I decided to sacrifice it for maybe 5-6 cards or a couple of cards and a smaller picture. Don't really know yet.  It's missing a couple of pieces now though!

 

I painted round the edge with acrylic paint to stop the fibres around the edge from coming loose.  I also crocheted some single chains of single strands of embroidery thread.  Then I pulled them about to make the holes odd sizes and stitched them on.  It's quite a good effect.  I bought the bright pink beads at Ally Pally nearly 2 years ago (just HAD to have them) and now I've finally used a few. Justified purchase!

 

 

 

 

Fancy, Fun, Frivolous, Felted Fishies

Lyn

It would seem that 2015 is the year of the fish for me!  

I wanted to make a felt 'fish bowl' after seeing these ceramic fishies and bubbles that Annie made during her evening classes. 

Annie wanted something simple but slightly quirkly to hang up in the house and being new to ceramics she had a look around for artists she could take inspiration from.  She instantly loved the works of Shirley Vauvelle so she attempted to create something in her style as a starting point.  Annie feels a long way off having her own ceramic style - it's hard enough just learning the basic techniques! The first layer of glaze was painted on then wiped off to leave glaze in the indents and then further colours applied on top.  Do check out Shirley Vauvelle's work on Pinterest, so lovely!  Shirley's Pinterest Page

My handmade felt was stitched with a lot of rayon thread because fish are shiny...

...and each fish is 12cm long (nearly 5").  Twelve of them are nose/tail to a base 10cm in diameter (4").

The underside of the bowl is just as decorated as the topside, so it could be displayed on a glass shelf, but as I don't have a glass shelf in my house, I had to work out a way to show the effect in a photograph.  Husband to the rescue!  He lifted a huge, wooden framed wall mirror from our hallway out into the garden and put it flat down on the lawn.  The weather was perfect - white cloud.  I placed the bowl on a perspex stand on the mirror and you can see both sides at once!

Taking photographs in the garden is not that easy.  Felt is very light and a few times I had to retrieve the bowl after it blew away in the breeze.  I had wanted to have the pond with its waterlillies as a backdrop for the bowl but I didn't fancy fishing it out of the water (pun intended).

I like the way the randomly coloured felt makes a bowl that looks slightly different every time it's turned, even by just an inch.

I really enjoyed making this bowl and I spent many hours on the sewing machine happily seeing it 'come to life'.  I haven't finished with the fishy theme yet - there are so many possiblities to play with when it comes to fishy shapes and colours.

e-Book giveaway on Felting and Fiber Studio Blog

Here's a great opportunity to win a fabulous e-book

"The Right Fibre" by Zed

(draw takes place 31st May 2015)

Pop on over to the blog to see what the e-book is all about - all you have to do to enter the giveaway is to leave a comment on the Felting and Fiber Studio's blog - here's the link: GIVEAWAY

Good luck!

Felted Flowers Pictures (I never get bored of flowers!)

Annie

A couple of weeks ago I started laying out this picture of flowers but at the time I didn't really know what I wanted to do with it. I had started by carding some yellow and green merino fibres to make a bright yellowy lime colour for a background and then put a few bits 'n' bobs on but decided to leave it while I had a think.  Over the next two weeks every time I walked by I added something to it and just let it grow organically to see what came of it.  Turns out I ended up totally overdoing it, but actually I quite like it so I guess it doesn't matter!  A bit like having lots of birds dropping random seeds in the garden I suppose :)

I put a detail pic in of this because I thought it was interesting - I had been trying to knit a basic skinny scarf with my handspun but didn't like it so I pulled it off the needles and this interesting shape was left.  It felted in really well!  It is easy to recreate - just cast on one short line of knitting, knit the first row then yank it off the needle.  Pull out the first row of stitches and this is what you are left with.  I have felted in single rows of crochet before too - it's great for added texture and felts in easily.

The funny thing is that I took it outside to try to photograph it and several bits blew away - maybe Mother Nature was trying to tell me something!  I thought I was playing safe by placing the fibres at the bottom of a clear plastic storage box so that I could take advantage of the natural daylight to get true colours in the photo.

 

I'm not sure yet but I think it might need a tiny bit (or a lot) of stitching to bring it to life.  I'll stick it on the wall and mull it over.  It is 26cm x 26cm felted.

We do love to make pictures of felted flowers.  It's relaxing because there is no pressure to get it "right".  Anything goes - any colour, any shape, plain or detailed.

This little picture (below) I made a short while ago for a greeting card but didn't send it to anyone.  It's just sat on my pinboard waiting, as inspiration. I'm really pleased with the texture and colour in this.

It was made from a small square cut out from a flowers picture like the pink and yellow one above.  I decided to make the petals raise up by putting really heavy machine stitching on the background between the petals.  It worked really well.  I added more running stitches and french knots by hand to finish it off.  I really like this effect. 

It's another thing in my pile of "ideas to take further" when that elusive spare couple of weeks turns up :)