Hello! Recently we did a blog post about our giveaway of our new feltmaking tutorial, but didn't realise during our break from blogging that the newsletter service had been switched off so no one received our news! We’ve now signed up with ‘Follow.It’ for sending emails out, and we hope you will continue to read our blog :)
If you would like to enter our free giveaway please let us know in the comments of the original post: Creative Feltmaking PDF Giveaway
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We've released a new pdf tutorial for sale in our Etsy shop, and to celebrate we're giving away 3 copies!
Our new 142 page pdf 'Creative Feltmaking - Flat Wet Felting Tutorial For Beginners Plus 9 Fun Picture Projects' shows you step-by-step how to make your first piece of flat felt so you will be making felt in no time, and then you can have fun making the picture projects using your own favourite colours if you choose.
Find out more about the pdf in our Etsy shop
If you'd like to be in the draw, please leave a comment below (note: comments are moderated so they won't appear immediately).
Each comment will be allocated a number and we will use a random number generator to pick 3 winners.
The draw closes at midnight GMT on Monday 13th March 2023 and the winners will be announced on Tuesday 14th March.
Good luck in the draw :) Of course if you buy a copy in the meantime then win, we'll happily refund you!
We also have a paperback version available on Amazon:
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Above: Art Yarn blending in with some twigs!
Annie
I’ve made some winter-into-spring, tree-inspired art yarn as my offering for the just-for-fun Q1 challenge over on the felting and fiber studio.
My yarn is purely for fun (it’s technically awful!) and for including in some wet felting at some point - it’s no good to knit with! It’s overspun and it’s messy & unbalanced (hmm, that sounds familiar!).
This quarter’s challenge is to find a tree that you like and depict it as it awakens in spring with buds/new leaves/blossom – it can be realistic or representational. It doesn't have to be a picture it can be anything textiles and fibre related e.g. weaving, felting, spinning, sewing etc.
I love love love making abstract tree pictures and will hopefully be doing many of them this year but for now I wanted to do something different so decided to spin some art yarn to represent what I saw in my garden - twiggy trees, some still very wintery, with frost, lichen & moss, some trees budding up and some really blooming like the witch hazel! I couldn’t choose a favourite so just went for "essence of tree".
There were lots of "sticky out bits" such as moss, lichen, buds, spurs etc, so I went for that as my theme. I thought that really really overspinning the fibre would make it coil and spring and stick up, and then adding chunks of cotton scrim fabrics and other bits would give extra texture & interest. These are some images I took for inspiration:
I couldn't make it quite as I'd like as I really need a wheel that can handle fat bonkers yarns but for now I have to force my little traditional wheel into submission as a new fancy one is really expensive, but firmly on my wish list!
So to start I made two batts - one twiggy coloured batt (grey, brown, blue, green - there are lots of colours in branches when you look close up) and a yellows based batt for the sticky-out bits like buds, and the sticky-on bits like lichen, with the plan to spin them, adding in bits as I go, then ply them together.
I spun the twigs and branches first, adding a white fluffy yarn to autowrap for a short length as I thought that would represent some frost that keeps appearing still.
Then I spun the sticky-out-bits yarn - and added the yellow / green fabrics etc for lichen, moss etc.
Despite having a wheel for many years I’ve probably only spun a handful of full bobbins and plied about 2 of them! So I got in a right mess and decided to ply by hand and not on the wheel! Luckily I’m not interested in spinning technically good yarn I just want it to be fluffy and pretty!
For variation, I left a length unplied and plied the rest.
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Annie
Having moved house I've had a genuine reason for having a messy workspace for the last few months! However, I now want to get on with some work so need at least one clear flat surface, some idea of where everything is, and what I have to work with. There is a lot to sort - bags of fibres, fabrics and other supplies, misc art materials, notebooks, sketchbooks, UFOs..... That's in addition to the 58 million or so inspiration photos I've taken (was life simpler before smart phones?!) plus the scramble of ideas lurking in all the corners of my imagination!
I feel like I'm now on a journey of rediscovery and I'm enjoying the process... emptying and sorting bit by bit all the boxes of crafting stuff into my new temporary work space (the spare bedroom!). Although at one point earlier today, I was trapped at the far end of the room, surrounded by piles of fluff, fabrics, papers, threads and paints, wondering if perhaps I had accumulated too many things, then decided I just need a bigger room!
I've rediscovered all sorts of things, like the giant flowers picture I felted a couple of years ago (pictured above) just folded into a bag waiting for it's day to shine! I haven't got a wall big enough for it here at the new house, so it may get a remodel in the form of taking the scissors to it, picking my favourite sections, and maybe adding stitching or painting..hmm.. not sure yet. The many projects will have to form an (dis)orderly queue!
I'm looking forward to making plenty of new work this year, but also enjoying revisiting old work and mining for ideas there too, I think it's surprising how inspiring your old work and sketchbooks can be, those forgotten ideas can often spark new exciting work!
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Hello and Seasons Greetings! We hope we find you well. We've been very quiet this year on our blog (eek! The last post was last Christmas!), but it’s just been such a busy old year and it’s simply flown by!
However, you can see our snow people characters have been busy in the picture above, decorating their gingerbread house and the young ones causing havoc messing around with the icing!
We have been taking creative time wherever possible, and also have an exciting new project that is nearly ready. After many years of thinking about it we have been working on a new book, yay! More on that to come very soon.
In the meantime we wish you a very happy, creative 2023.
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Annie
Not a felt making related thing, but just wanted to hop on to wish a Happy Christmas to everyone from me and mum.
We haven't done Christmas crafting this year but a couple of days ago I decided to bring in branches from the garden again, and fashion a 'tree' from them.... I stuck them into an old chimney pot, added strings of twinkly lights and decorated with our ever growing collection of lovely decorations. Am rather pleased with the result!
Our latest decorations are these gorgeous penguins by https://www.instagram.com/jessicahogarthshop/
and this adorable rudolph knitted jumper by https://www.instagram.com/littlefaceknits/
All rounded off with a tasty Cosmopolitan, yum! Cheers!
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The Pasty Pirate with his stolen treasure!
Lyn
Back in 2012 I made a wet felt & mixed media picture of The Pasty Pirate inspired by various trips to the seaside - Seagulls are notorious for stealing food from tourists in UK seaside towns. The cheeky birds behave like pirates – swooping in and stealing the treasure – pasties are a favourite!
There are lots of signs in seaside towns asking visitors to be careful when eating their takeaway food so it does not get pinched from above! We are asked not to actively feed the birds as it's bad for them for the same reasons it's bad for us to eat lots of fast food. Also, they get used to an easy, unhealthy junk food diet rather than fishing for seafood and eating insects.
They are lovely birds, absolutely full of character, so after watching them many times I felt inspired to make another picture :)
Update: 30 Jan 2023 - A tutorial for this version of the pasty pirate - pictured above - is now available as one of the projects in our latest instructional PDF, 'Creative Feltmaking', in our Etsy Shop
'Creative Feltmaking' is a bumper 142 pages of colourful feltmaking fun for beginners and for those who already enjoy feltmaking.
It shows you, step-by-step, how to make your first piece of flat wet felt, how to make pre-felt, how to use other surface design materials and an introduction to flat needle felting. Then shows how to create 9 fun picture projects using a range of styles and techniques. All of the projects can be personalised by choosing and using your favourite colours!
Use code ROSIE20 for 20% off if you buy 2 or more PDFs :)
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Wet Felted Vase Of Flowers
Annie
I recently made this picture to take part in the 'first quarter challenge' over on the Fibre and Felting Forum. I'm a little late posting this as it's nearly the end of the second quarter, but who's counting?! :)
The subject was 1900-1910. It turns out there was so much interesting stuff happening around that time that after a session of internet searching, I felt slightly overwhelmed by choice, so I returned to my old favourite of big bunches of colourful flowers after discovering the paintings of Odilon Redon.
I printed out some pics of his paintings for inspiration and I referred to the photos but didn't try to copy them - I just picked out colours and shapes and then added my own, organising them into a new arrangement. That's the good thing about flowers - anything goes!
This is how it started (after I'd laid down all sorts of things and ripped them back off because I didn't like them, this made a good starting point!), and I didn't really know where I was going with it. I had planned to lay out several samples and test pieces for ideas first but ended up getting carried away and covered the whole yellow base with one design instead.
The vase was attached separately (using iron-on Vilene) after felting because it was very flimsy fabric and I thought too much yellow fibre would show through if I just felted it on.
The finished thing is an odd size at 50cm x 60cm, but it'll do.
It felted really well but I haven't overworked it to keep the colours bright. I'll leave it a bit longer before deciding whether to do more to to it with stitching or paint... or the scissors!
I do like to experiment, but I like this one just as it is too, so will need to ponder for a bit. Meantime it can sit on my wall and give out happy vibes :) I really enjoyed making this picture. It's very cheerful and was a lot of fun :)
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Annie
Errrmmm....is it too late for Happy New Year?! Some of my friends say this year has dragged by but for me it has whizzed past for some reason and I realised we hadn't posted anything since Christmas! I think that is a common theme for me though because today I'm writing about a great big piece of felt that I have finally felted, but started, it seems, back in June 2019. I mentioned it here in this post from February last year where I also appear to have lost January somewhere!
Anyway, this piece of felt is the largest piece of flat felt I've made, at 120cm x 120cm, and it was challenging in many ways from not being able to see the whole composition without standing on a chair to the physical task of felting it! It did take a prolonged period to get it to a stage where I had done enough rejigging that I was happy and wanted to felt it, what with me leaving it on the table then adding or taking bits away here and there rather than just cracking on with it. It has been a nice project but it's such a relief to have my table back now! I'm happy with how it turned out, but I'm not declaring it "finished" just yet as I feel like I want to experiment on it with the embellisher, painting and stitching maybe. Not sure yet.
The overall design changed a lot from the original idea but I've enjoyed letting it just unfold. I probably have overdone it a little bit, it doesn't have any breathing space in it, but at least it is colourful and happy!
Here are a few photos of the progression of laying it out. It changed about a million times but these pictures show a few of the stages:
And here is an image to show closer up from an angle. There is a lot going on and lots of layers in places:
It is quite thick in some places and thinner in others but it held the square shape pretty well. I've put other photos etc over on our Instagram if you are interested in having a look over there.
Now I need to leave this one to "brew" for a little while, pinned on my pinboard to see what it tells me it needs in terms of any painting or stitching etc, or whether it should just be as it is.
This has been fun to try something new by working large, I'll definitely try it again at some point, but might treat myself to some quicker easier projects in the meantime! :)
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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
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