rosiepink

Colourful Handfelted Christmas Decorations

Annie

Recently I have had some fun making a selection of Christmas decorations, prompted by the Felting & Fibre Forum 4th Quarter Challenge.

I got a bit carried away and during the process my desk was a big colourful mess!

My previous 2 posts have shown a couple of the things I made and here are some photos of the rest of it.  Most of the explanatory text is over on the forum so that it's not duplicated both here and there.   It's mostly very simply made from pieces of handmade felt, backed with fabric for stiffness, and then all stitched together.  All in rather unusual colours! :)

I also had several more ideas including modifying some old shop bought decorations, and I wanted to make some oversized wired holly and some other things including revisiting felted letters to spell out various greetings, so these may be things to save for next year as time is flying now!  I hope you have enjoyed some seasonal crafting projects too.

From Holly Leaves to Landscapes

Annie

Following on from the previous post...My first idea for a seasonal project for the Christmas decoration challenge had been to make a wreath of holly leaves.  It didn't work out as planned but I thought I'd share the felt I made because I rather like it!  The wreath idea was inspired by my Christmas Podding project that I made a few years back. I really liked the wired felt holly leaves and I thought it would be fun to make a big bunch of them to create a wreath.  All of the leaves would be wired and then twisted into shape.  I wanted to make the leaves with a base of green but with lots of other more unusual colours throughout to make it a bit quirky.  I could picture it in my minds eye so I picked some colours in Merino, starting with greens then added pink and turquoise etc.  I also added some bits n bobs like white cotton nepps (possibly to be frost / snow?), and some other types of wool for a bit of texture:

Once I'd laid the fibres out I added some fabric pieces and yarns and it was looking pretty good for what I wanted:

However, after felting I realised that maybe I had used more dark green than I needed, and not enough of the other colours, so while I really liked the felt it wasn't what I wanted for the leaves that I had imagined.  I cut one leaf out but changed my mind.  This is the piece of felt:

It might not be what I had planned exactly but it's a great piece of felt with lots of interesting sections.  That's the fab thing about a big piece of decorative felt is that often when cropped into smaller pieces new images appear.  There are some really lovely passages in this felt, which to me resemble the countryside landscape.  I love to visit Yorkshire when I can and some of these remind me of the hills, streams, sheep, rocks etc.  Can you see abstract landscapes in these pieces or is it just me?!  

 

I did end up making some more holly leaves in the end from new pieces of felt that I made from blue, pink and yellow Merino fibres, with the addition of various fabrics and yarns.  I made a wreath from them but didn't have time to wire them and go over the top with it.  I'll add that to the project list for next year!  Here are the leaves, I'll post about the wreath later, as my posts get way too long!

  

Starry Night Hand Felted Table Runner

Annie

Despite good crafting intentions, I don't always get round to making things for Christmas because time flies so fast and I miss it!  This year I thought I'd make more effort to get organised and the 4th quarter challenge on the felting and fibre forum, to make a Christmas decoration, gave me an extra push to do it, and I'm glad I did as I ended up having a lot of fun!  

The trouble, though, is once I started thinking about it I ended up with too many ideas and I fiddled and faffed for days playing with this, that and the other.  I ended up making several things, the first being this starry sky themed table runner / mat:

 

The table mat idea came about to protect the sideboard in my hallway from all the various keys, mugs of tea and other random things that get deposited there.  

I had all sorts of colour and pattern ideas during the summer when I first thought about making one, but now it's winter I decided on an inky dark blue sky background with white stars.  I had made a sample using Merino for something else ages ago in blue with white stars so I thought I'd use that idea but scale it up bigger for a seasonal mat design.  I laid out 2 layers of white as a base in a traditional way, then pulled out the blue fibres in a loose puffy way to let the white under layers migrate through a little more:

I'm not sure what size the dry layout was but after wet felting it is 35cm x 65cm.

For the stars, I used a sheet of very thin white prefelt that I had made earlier in the year for some other purpose that I can't remember! I wetted down the base fibres then I cut the stars out freehand and laid them in a design on top:

Unfortunately the stars didn't felt in properly to the blue fibres.  I realised I must have used the duff batch of white for that felt that has got mixed in with my stash.  It has given me problems on a couple of occasions but I'm not sure which batch of fibres it is so it's a lottery!

However, I liked the mat and wanted to save it so I tried several ideas out on samples, like painting, needle felting and machine embroidery that might hold the fibres in place better. I also toyed with adding hand embroidery for extra decoration.

In the end, being impatient I ran it under the embellisher needles and it worked rather well! I might do more to it another time, and experiment with the paint etc but in the meantime I think it looks OK with just the needle felting, and it will protect the sideboard from household debris for now!

A great side effect of the white felt not felting in was that after I had used the embellishing machine to fix it, and firmly felt the fibres in, I turned the mat over and noticed that the back looked pretty good! It has made it so that it's reversible. A good result from what was a failure!

I like the effect of the of the needling showing through on the reverse, it looks almost like printmaking, so I will put that one in the ideas bank for future use :)

 

We wish you a Merry Christmas ....

.... and a Happy New Year!

Lyn

This year the snow people wanted me to show them as carol singers, but the young ones soon lost interest.

I had great fun positioning the snow people for their photo and I hope the diorama makes you smile :)

I made the snow people from white merino wool in my usual way - as shown in this post - then I made their hats and scarves with pieces of scrap felt, stitching and knitting.

To complete the scene I made the song sheets using free printable sheet music that I folded into mini paper planes, then I spent an enjoyable hour of "cutting and sticking" to make the lamp post from lots of odds and ends including black paper, black card, a cocktail stick that I painted black, a long white bead, a black round bead, and a piece of white fancy yarn.

Annie and I hope you have a peaceful holiday season and a creative new year!

 

Mixed Media Christmas 'Tree'

Lyn

This is my version of a commonplace Christmas decoration - it's not an original idea but it's unique because I've made all the bits!  My colour palette was inspired by the winter sky - blue, white, yellow, pink and grey.

I made this as my entry into the fourth quarter challenge on The Felting and Fiber Forum - please pop over to see how it was made. 

I've made many snowpeople and I enjoy making hats and scarves for them so I just had to make one for this display.  If you'd like to know how to make them, please see this blog post

This is the most fun time of year to make decorations for your home!

Handmade Felt Hat

Lyn

The evenings are feeling a bit autumnal now so it won't be long before we need to wrap up against the cold here in the UK!

So I decided to make myself a new warm hat from handmade felt.  I made a large piece of nuno felt from which to cut and stitch my hat. If you'd like to know the story behind it and how it was made, please pop over to The Felting and Fiber Forum Blog 

I like the way the construction of the hat made the top look!

 

Yet again the summer has whizzed by this year but I love autumn just as much and I'm looking forward to going for fresh crisp walks among the colourful trees.  Wearing my new hat of course! :) 

 

 

 

 

 

Some bright and cheerful flowers in a vase (no, it's not a pineapple!)

Annie

I love blue. Blue is often my default colour.  So I challenged myself to complete the layout of these flowers with no blue at all and used more purple and green. I think it worked ok and it makes a nice change, but is possibly still a little uncomfortable for me. I'm not sure!  I do like it though as it feels fresh and colourful.

I added, removed, moved and added more bits over about 3 weeks. I just left it on the table and did something to it most days. At one point I asked my husband his opinion and he enquired about the pineapple in the composition! I have to agree once I saw it it was hard to unsee it but I still think it's an interesting vase so I left it!  Here are some progress pictures of how it evolved:

I didn't pay much attention to layering up fibres to ensure that bits wouldn't fall off during felting but it seems to have faired quite well.  One or two pieces might need a little stitch or a poke with a felting needle but overall it felted really well.  Sometimes the felting process can change the look and texture quite considerably (this can be a good or a bad thing depending on the result you want!) but in this case I like that it hasn't distorted too much or gone fluffy round the details.  Here it is felted:

 

It's about 44-46cm depending on where it's measured.

I now just need to decide at some point whether to experiment on it with machine or hand stitching or acrylic paints. Hmmmm, it could be a disaster but it could be a lot of fun too!

 

Finding Compositions Using Viewfinders (and Scissors!)

Abstract Coastal Picture from Handmade Felt (20cm x 20cm)

Annie

I decided to revisit my coastal photos and pebbles theme from the previous post, but in my usual way I ended up doing something else - still coastal, but not the pebbles....yet. I was trying to find a fresh composition for them so I flicked through some photos for reference and did some very basic sketches on an A3 piece of paper of a variety lines, shapes and motifs from the photos. I used view finders to look over the sketching to find interesting passages and ended up picking one that was unexpected, and then decided to use it exactly as it was, rather than finding a home for the pebbles for now.  This cropped section is only about 6cm x 6cm but I scaled it up to 20cm x 20cm.

I think this method can work for finding compositions because when you crop down, then the lines "go over the edge" of the boundary of the view finder and also in this case the objects are not to relative scale. I find by cropping out a small section to work with it introduces more interest, movement, angles and randomness than I could achieve by intentionally drawing within the boundaries of a piece of paper or square of fibres. So the marks and lines and other inputs are done with intention but the finished thing is helped along a bit by fate and randomness.

To make the piece of felt I laid out two fine layers of natural merino, then a layer of fabric, then some more fibres thinly laid, then some white scrim, then more fibres and finally some details created with fabrics, prefelts and yarn.

It is only a very simple composition but I think it works quite well. Toward the end of the felting process I cut it square (20cm x 20cm) with a rotary cutter then worked it a bit more to finish the edges. It would probably look good with company, maybe in a set of 3 or 9.

I like groups of squares set out together to make an overall display. Recently I painted a picture of some really pretty flowers that I had bought to brighten up my hallway, then immediately took the scissors to it because it was awful and didn't do them justice at all! However, cutting it into squares (4cm x 4cm) and randomly rearranging the pieces improved it no end and made it much more visually appealing!

 

 

 

Here is my inspiration - a collage of the flowers in my hallway:

I think I'll keep these little squares in my sketchbook as they could feed into future work, or at least serve as a reminder of ways to start work when I feel stuck.  I have many ways of working - sometimes I plan, sometimes I use prompts or other methods like those above, and quite often I just dive in headlong and see what happens! How do you plan your felt art? Or do you just jump straight in and make it up as you go along?  

The challenges of working big with feltmaking; pebbles lovely pebbles; so many projects but not enough time - where did January go?!

Choosing colours for a project, great fun! :)

Annie

Back in June I laid out a base of fibres 120cm x 120cm because I liked the idea of attempting to make a great big bit of felt. I mentioned it at the end of this post but in the end I had to roll it up out of the way because I didn't have a plan for it, it was taking up too much of my work space and I also wanted to work on other things.

A couple of weeks ago I got it out again following yet another craft space reorganisation! There still isn't enough room for it really but I want to work on it now. I always crave just one more table (one flat clear surface to do things - but in reality it would just get another project plonked on it!)

Anyway, after much deliberation I decided to revert to my original plan of making this piece into a big vase of (or general splat of) imaginary flowers. I've decided to use it as a test piece to try out various ideas so there is no pressure for it to have a fantastic outcome, this one is just about the process. In the photo at the top I'm holding a bunch of fibres up against the layout trying to decide on the next layer, which I have subsequently laid down, and now moved on to auditioning various colours and weights of fabrics. Nothing is decided yet, this bit is just about moving things about and seeing what happens!

So, anyway, back to the table and the size of the layout. The first issue (aside from it taking up far too much room!) is that when you have a big layout on the go it is hard to see the whole thing as you work. I considered working on the floor so I could see it from above but that would just lead to it getting walked on and scattered across the floor. It would be so much easier if you could layout fibres on an easel so you could stand back from your work. Alas gravity does not agree with that. So for a while I was getting up and down on to a stool but that is exhausting and only helps while you are actually up on the stool. Hmmm.....so I thought I'd try to raise one end of the tables up and see what happened. I won't go into too much detail about trying to find various things to raise the legs up only to remember 30 minutes later when I was trying to prop the table up that the legs were completely adjustable! So I now have one end at 68 cm and the other end at 88cm high.

Ignore the mess :) It's still not quite enough slant but it does help a lot. Trouble is that I think any more than that might put too much pressure on the front legs. If I decide to do more working big I may have to make a proper hinged / tiltable work surface or something. The architects ones you can buy don't seem to be big enough and are rather expensive in many cases. Has anyone else had this issue, or is it just me?!

Another project on a slow burner inspired from a trip last year is one that could lead to many creative projects... In December last year my husband and I had a lovely week in Yorkshire. We hired a little cottage at the edge of a woodland. An hour walk through the woodland came out on a wonderful beach with really big colourful pebbles - indigo blue, pinks, rusty oranges and reds, greens, greys, yellows, all sorts. Plus loads of really interesting mustardy coloured seaweed. I could have spent all day wandering on that beach picking things up and putting them down. Fascinating shapes, colours, textures and patterns, and lots of the pebbles were huge, way bigger than my size 8 walking boots! But after about an hour and a half my husband declared that it was too cold and most definitely time for the pub! Happily that was just a short stroll back up through the woods where we found a lovely open fire, and great home cooked food :)

Anyway, as always I took about a million photos and felt my creative brain tingling!

Oh, and just because they are very cute and could make a nice felt picture one day, here are the seals at Ravenscar down the road from where we were staying

I carded up a couple of test batts to make into prefelts or samples reflecting some of the colours at the beach.  I picked out some of the obvious colours and then some of the less featured colours and magnified them.

I felted both batts quite loosely to give me plenty of options in how I might want to use them later. I'm not sure what my plans are for these yet, more to come later.

I thought it might be effective to cut out some pebble shapes from the felt to use in further work so I cut out a couple of rough stencils just to see.....  Yes, I quite like it, this needs further exploration! :)

I've got so many projects on the go or waiting to get on the go! I still haven't found a perfect way to organise and manage all of my ideas and projects but things filter through eventually and as long as there is regularly some creativity in the day, even if it is a bit chaotic, then that's the important thing!

Season's Greetings!

 

snowpeople diorama by rosiepink 2019

 

Season's Greetings to all readers of our blog!  We wish you Happy Holidays and a very Creative New Year.

Thank you to Bev for her free miniature stripey sock knitting pattern that was used in the snowpeople diorama above - you can find the pattern here

This year's Christmas image was made from handmade felt balls and miniature knitting and crochet - we hope it makes you smile :)