rosiepink

How to make felted soaps and pebbles

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We hope you enjoy using our new free tutorial - why not get together with some friends to have some felting fun?  It's much kinder on the waistline than coffee and cake!

Felted soaps are quick and inexpensive to make and are an easy introduction to felting for children and adults alike.

Wrapped with ribbon or yarn, a felted soap makes a pretty gift that will last much longer than an uncovered bar of soap and the felt shrinks with the soap so that at the end you have a handy scrubby.

Felted pebbles are made in the same way as soaps - they are ornamental and can also be used as paperweights.

If you have a craft stall, felted soaps and pebbles are so pretty that a couple of baskets placed at the front of the table will draw customers' interest. 

The free tutorial can be found in the left-hand sidebar - have fun!

 

Felting and Fiber Abstract Challenge

We're loving April with the longer, lighter days - but a few less showers would be good!

And in case you're wondering if we ever got the spring clean done?  Ummm, no, not yet, too many other more important things to do!

We hope you have fun with our two new free tutorials, listed in the left-hand sidebar.  One shows how to make felt beads and simple jewellery and the other shows how to make a simple bag/purse using a resist.

If you're stuck in an artistic rut and need a nudge, how about a challenge?  The Felting and Fiber Studio is a collective of international felt and fiber artists (there's a link in our 'blog list' in the right-hand sidebar) and they have thrown out a challenge to make something in 'abstract representation'.  

As we are often influenced by the sea, abstract representations of a seagull and a windsurfer were submitted for the challenge.

Abstract Representation - Seagull 

The sky is wet-felted with blue merino wool, then the seagull is needle-felted onto it using pure-wool yarn in white, grey, lilac and purple.  His beady eye is just that - a pretty bead!

Abstract Representation - Windsurfer

The sea is wet-felted with turquoise merino wool and the windsurfer board and sail are represented by strips of white, yellow and purple merino wool wet-felted into place.

Abstract Representation - Sea and Sky

This image was achieved using just dry fibres - it's a beautiful picture, but impossible to hang on a wall!

It's good to take a challenge - sometimes we need a little push to leave our comfort zones.

 

 

 

 

Re-purposing Felt and Fabrics

With the days getting longer and brighter I had the urge to spring clean the workroom.  Mum lent a hand but not much cleaning or sorting got done, because after moving things around we of course rediscovered lots of pretty bits of leftover felt and fabrics that we didn’t want to hide away again - we have stacks of charity shop gems - open weave scarves, cushion covers, sparkly tops!  So we sat in a room that looked like a ransacked haberdashery shop and planned to ‘re-purpose’ some of it.  It’s a great idea because you feel as if you’re getting something for nothing.

Last year we found an interesting piece of fabric in a charity shop that begged to be used in some nuno felt.  It was extremely flimsy with a large open weave and had thin coloured stripes that reminded us of the sea.  At the time we laid out merino wool tops in sea colours then placed the material on the top.  The felting made the material ‘wave’ and although we liked it very much, we never got around to doing anything with it, so it went in "the box".

The piece is 26” x 14” and therefore large enough to use as the background for a picture.  So we pondered a bit and remembered that this is the year of the dragon that promises good luck, good fortune and creativity, so we thought a weedy sea dragon would be fun.  It’s a close relative of the sea horse and comes in so many colours that we couldn’t resist grabbing some other scraps of felt left over from various projects, a little merino waste scraped from the carding drum and a few inches of fancy yarn to needle felt a weedy sea dragon onto the nuno felt.

 

The spring clean is waiting to be done another day.....soon!

 

 

 

Merry Christmas!

Hello everyone.  Merry Christmas! 

It's been such a busy year! Not nearly enough time to play and make felt and sew, so we'll definitely have to sort that out over the next year!  Just wanted to pop by and wish everyone a Merry Christmas - hope you all have a lovely time.

I decided today that anything Christmas related that wasn't done by now would just have to wait. Its my first day off from the office for the holiday today and I decided to indulge myself and sew!

I wanted a quick and simple project that I could finish in a couple of hours (otherwise things have a habit of remaining in the unfinished pile! So I dug around in my felt leftovers box and found an interesting little piece of felt in need of some love!  So in a couple of hours of blissful, non-planned out stitching it became this picture of a wintery sunshiney hillside...

...from this little scrap of felt (measuring 20cm x 15cm):

It just needs a bit of backing card, and maybe a recycled frame.  It was cut from a big piece of felt when I was experimenting with layering sections of felt a while back.  That project never got finished but it has opened up a new world of smaller projects!

Mum has been busy with nuno felting and has made this really pretty cushion front.  Much of the stronger colour comes from fine fabric (recycled chiffon and silk scarves!) felted into the merino wool.  Machine stitching adds lovely detail to the petals and the flower centre:

One last thing before I go, I made a new discovery today.  Not sure if it works or not, but is definitely worthy of further exploration!   While photographing the winter hillside picture I stumbled upon this effect by accidentally turning my spotlight light on while it was under the felt...I'm hoping it looks like twinkly fairly lights (either that or a forest fire.  Hopefully fairy lights win?!):

Merry Christmas!!

(here is a beautiful Christmas card handmade by my mum, just for you x)

Experimental Stitched Felt & Fabric Collage - Work in Progress

While rummaging through some of my stash boxes at the weekend I came across a lonely, unfinished and neglected felt picture that I felted about 2 years ago and then abandoned because I thought at the time it hadn’t gone “right” and was nothing like what I’d had in mind.  But of course there is no right and wrong, and, with fresh eyes I decided I would begin to rescue and recycle this piece, instead of doing what I had planned to do that day.  I’m sooo easily distracted!

It’s a harbour scene inspired by so many lovely coastal holidays.  I'm using it now simply as base for a completely different take on the original idea - instead of just felt and stitch I am completing it using lots of messy stitched fabric collage to give it loads of texture and a whole new colour palette to really bring it to life.  You can see in the pictures the first few bits of fabric being applied.  It could be a complete disaster!  But I like to experiment so we will see :-)

It’s quite a big piece at 90cm x 55cm so will take quite a while to finish!  There’s lots of tearing & cutting and miles & miles of stitching to do.  There will be both hand and machine stitching and maybe even a bit of acrylic paint I reckon.  Not sure yet.  Whatever takes my mood at the time!

I’ve collected together some of my photos of harbour scenes from holidays in Devon and Cornwall for inspiration so it will be a mixture of elements from those photos and a lot from imagination.  There will almost certainly be bunting!  More pictures to come as it progresses...

Felted Flotsam Picture

Hello

Just wanted to share this simple but effective felt picture of flotsam that mum made recently.  She made a fine piece of flat felt from blues and turquoises with scattered torn scrim, nepps, silk noils and silk tops.  For an experiment she used CMC paste (after felting) to give it a 3D effect of gentle waves.  This photo is taken at angle, so hopefully you can see the shape of the waves. 

Here it is in its flat form before the CMC paste was applied. 

The finished size is 80 cm x 40 cm.  It seems the list of things you can make and do with handmade felt is endless - if only there were more hours in the day to play!

Many happy hours of machine and hand stitching later......

.....a piece of flowery textile art is finished.  Ta dah!  Fluffy felty stitchy flowers. Done :-)

Really enjoyed making this picture - lots of texture was created while machine stitching into the handmade felt and then adding small details by hand lifted the colours in places, especially a little spray of white flowers here and there and lots of colorful french knots.  Trouble is that its hard to know when to stop!

Making Handspun Yarns for Creating Texture in Handmade Felt

I had a bit of a play yesterday - look what I made!  OK, so I'm no expert and its a bit rough and bumpy, but luckily that's exactly what we want for adding texture to our handmade felt artwork!

Handspun yarn is great for adding texture in handmade felt, and for ages we've wanted to be able to make our own so that we can have just a couple of metres of each of lots of colours that are custom to our projects.   I've been putting off having a go despite us buying some equipment a couple of years ago as I didn't really know what I was doing and had little time to figure it out.  However, yesterday I got brave, dusted off the carder and the wheel, watched a couple of great "how to" videos and just had a go!  I decided not to worry about being too technical and to just see what happened - especially as this yarn doesn't need to be "good" yarn - I quickly realised that I could easily create an overtwisted, knobbly, and very imperfect yarn!  Ta dah!  Perfect for felt making!

Here are my "ingredients" ready to be yummed up by the carding machine....

Before carding my batt I watched a handful of short videos on creating art batts, and these are the ones I liked best:

How to card an art batt on a drum carder from NeauveauFibreArts shows a technique for layering everything up before feeding it in to the carder which seems to work nicely!

Drum Carding Art Batts by AtomicBlue

Carding a Jazzy Batt by JazzTurtleCreations

After watching the last two I realised there are so many toys that I want NEED!  Especially a carder with coarser cloth and wider teeth to cope with more fibre types.  Will have to save up :-)

So, here are the fibres starting to get pulled on to the big drum - yum!

And here is my finished batt after about 10 minutes of playing with the carder and putting random colours and fibres through!

Among other things, it is made of merino, wensleydale, silks and some lovely sparkly angelina fibres although I couldn't persuade the camera to pick up the glittery detail unfortunately!

I'm a bit impatient, always looking for instant gratification, so I only watched one or two videos on how to actually spin.  I had one lesson a couple of years so thought that would do!

How to Spin Roving into Yarn from NeauveauFibreArts was the one I watched and it was a good intro.  Again, I realised I now want NEED a wheel with a bigger orifice!  I want to make thick, bobbly, highly textured yarns!

I'm sure there is a proper way to prepare a batt for spinning but I just sort of tore mine apart and had a go!  The batt didn't make much, only about 30g!  But its a start.  I need to practice making a hank, but here it is in all its imperfect glory!

Anyway, I'm glad I got over my "fear" of having a go and now I can't wait to make loads! 

Oh, and I finally made some progress on stitching the flowers pic....

...the finished thing will be with you shortly!

 

More Wet Felt Making and lots of odds n ends!

Forgot to say last time that we are delighted to be the current 'Featured Artist' at Wingham Wool Work !  Go take a peek! 

I made some progress on my Spring Flowers picture by finally getting around to felting it - now I just need to wait for it to dry properly before I attack it with needles and threads and make it come alive!

Mum has also been busy and has created this lovely picture of a beached boat:

She was inspired after looking through some of our old holiday photos.  The boat hull and fence-post shapes were cut from handmade, grey pre-felt then placed on top of dry fibres that had been laid out for the background of beach, sea and sky before wet felting together. Machine stitching picked out the planking on the boat and made the wire on the fence-posts.

It is 65cm x 31cm.

As you know, mum and I have recently launched our eBook 'Creating Felt Artwork' and we’ve been so pleased to receive such a lot of positive feedback and sales already.  It has been really popular so far and we are really glad it is being well received after so much hard (but fun) work!

Some of you may already be familiar with a delightful blog Clasheen.  Nicola and Chrissie have also written a book called ‘From Felt to Friendship’ ...a glimpse into the working lives and inspiration of two totally dedicated felters...  Looks fabulous!

 

 

New felt picture in progress - Some handmade felt springy woolly felty flowers :)

Hello! On Saturday I stole back some time for myself and indulged in some creativity - Heaven!  I haven't been able to have much time for feltmaking recently so I really went to town given the opportunity - out came all the boxes of fibre goodness and fluff, and after lots of rummaging around in my stash of wool and wonders (think "child in sweet shop!") my workspace looked like a big colourful explosion in a fibre factory! After sifting through my inspiration box (and playing with the wool for a while, and after a lot of indecisiveness, and revisiting some of my scribbled and sketched ideas), I decided to lay out a picture of some bright felty spring flowers.  I used merino wool, prefelts, yarn and hand dyed scrim.

As I haven't made anything in a while, due to work commitments etc, the floodgates opened. Faced with 100s of colours of wool, lots of gorgeous wool yarns and fabrics and silks, it was hard not to go overboard (did I overcook it?) Initially I was just going to make a few little samples to play with but once I got going I thought I might as well make a nice big piece!
It is about 70 cm square before felting.


The great thing about felting is that there is no right or wrong way to do it.
How you make felt artwork is up to you - it doesn't have to be hardwearing or a specific size or thickness it just has to look nice. So thick or thin, small or large it doesn't matter - the key is to experiment!  And if something doesn't felt in how you want it to - then you can stitch over it later!

My picture is now sat on my table waiting to be felted.  Then I'm looking forward to getting out the sewing machine, embroidery threads, tapestry wools and yarns, and stitching into it.  I feel like going a little crazy on this one but maybe I should wait and see what it looks like felted first.

Have got an idea for my next piece (and several pieces after that!) but I am going to try to be good and at least felt this one before moving on to the next one!