rosiepink

Felt & Stitched Sketch of Tower Bridge

Lyn

I wanted to make an abstract background for 'Tower Bridge', shown above, and as I have a large box of handmade felt off-cuts and experimental samples, I chose a piece that I thought would be suitable colours.  

I had made this sample with base layers of royal blue merino wool fibres then randomly placed pieces of open-weave fabric and rectangles of felt off-cuts on top.  After a bit of felting I added orange stitches using tapestry wool then carried on with the fulling.  I liked the texture and colour blends but it was just a bit of fun and it was consigned to 'the box'.

I used a rotary cutter to cut the sample into small rectangles then played around with the placement of them. 

I wanted to achieve a background reminiscent of tall buildings, lights, sky and water.

I made four fine layers of white merino wool fibres then placed the cut rectangles on top - I changed the arrangement as I worked.  The whole lot was then felted together.  The finished felt and stitch sketch is approx 23 x 15cm (9"x 6").

 

This angled shot shows the lovely texture.

 

The third quarter challenge on The Felting and Fiber Forum is 'cityscapes' - please go on over to have a look and perhaps consider entering the challenge - doesn't matter if you're a beginner or a pro - just have a go!  Membership of the Forum is free and it's easy to join.

 

More Experimental Fibre Layout for Wet Felting - Seascape

Cropped section of experimental piece of felt

Annie

Continuing on from the last post here is the second piece I made by laying out fairly sparse fibres, threads and fabrics, skipping the more traditional perpendicular base layers.

This one I laid out with the intention of looking like a seascape to fit in with this quarters challenge ("Seascapes").  Here it is as a whole piece, approx 50cm x 55cm (20in x 22in):

But I like it cropped into smaller pieces:

I also quite like it whole but with the edges cropped, although it is maybe a bit "busy" with not enough areas of plain colour to give it breathing space:

I had intended to keep the layout really sparse but I got carried away.  Here is how is started and ended:

Still, have got plenty of scope left for more experiments with this technique.  Definitely time for some flowery pieces! :)

Lyn

I really enjoyed making my seascape "Waiting for the Surf" ...

... and in it's frame ...

... and a close-up of the surf.

I made this seascape for the second quarter challenge on the Felting and Fiber Forum so if you'd like to see it from 'inspiration to completion', please pop on over through the link.
 

 

Experimental Fibre Layout for Wet Felting

Above: Experimental Fibre Layout

Annie

A while ago I made a tiny sample of "barely there" felt from a few wisps of fibres and some threads and yarns.  It's only approx 12cm x 17cm (5in x 7in) and I pinned it on my board for future reference:

This structure of fibres would only really be useful for artwork as it's so delicate, but that's mostly what I like to do anyway. I found it quite interesting so I decided to have another play with this way of laying out fibres, only a bit bigger. It's quite similar to the work I'm doing with puffing out and felting batts, skipping the laying out of perpendicular base layers as you might in the traditional fashion. This also uses lots of extra bits like fabrics and threads.

I've made two pieces so far, both of which ended up more substantial than I had planned but will be making some more to try out various structures of threads and fibres to see what works. That's the trouble with feltmaking - I find that I start off with one idea in mind then end up doing something else!

Anyway, this one started out as a seascape because I had the forum quarterly challenge ("Seascapes") in mind but actually reminds me of when you look up through the trees towards the sky:

Here it is while it was still wet:

It is approx 40cm x 40cm (16in x 16in).  It didn't change or open up as much as I thought it would during felting despite laying down the fibres quite sparsely. I think I put down more fibres than in my original sample. I made the sample ages ago though so it's hard to remember exactly what I did.

Some cropped out sections of the bigger piece look quite interesting. They become seascapes, landscapes, or just colourful abstracts.  These 2 cropped pieces I think do look like seascapes...

...but it's satisfying how you can see different passages as different things as you move a viewfinder around over the surface of the felt.

The second piece I've made is a slightly bigger piece and is more seascape-y. I'll post it in a couple of days as I'm aware this is getting long and rambly already!

I'm going to have a go at a few more too. I think I'm going to have to do one of a meadow or a vase of flowers. I'd like to go bigger too. I also think it needs some experimenting with paint and stitching. This felt would possibly make interesting prefelt if cut up into shapes too. Hmmmmm..... :)

How to string felt beads, make a double sliding knot, and a few ideas

Update to this blog post: Aug 2024

Thank you for visiting our blog.  This tutorial has been on our blog for several years but we have now moved it to Etsy to join some of our other tutorials. Please take a look here:

Link to Our Etsy Shop

How to do Simple Embroidery on Felt Beads

Update to this blog post: Aug 2024

Thank you for visiting our blog.  This tutorial has been on our blog for several years but we have now moved it to Etsy to join some of our other tutorials. Please take a look here:

Link to Our Etsy Shop

Sketching with fibres and fabrics

Above: Fun with making & felting carded batts

Annie

Hello.  Anyone know where the first 3 months of the year went?  I appear to have lost them somewhere!  Hope you are all having a lovely and creative year so far. 

Life has been busy, busy, busy (mostly in a good way so I'm not complaining!) so when it comes to getting big creative work done I'm not finding enough time at the moment.  Am planning to change that but in the meantime I've just been doing things in small, easy doses and simply enjoying the process of "sketching" with fibres and fabrics etc.  Not planned pieces, just whatever comes. Same as you might doodle in a sketchbook with paints or pens. No pressure. Feels nice :) Here I'm sharing some of my landscape "sketches" that I've been playing with recently, in keeping with the Forum First Quarter Challenge.

Sometimes I find it can be frustrating trying to work fast and loose with textiles because it can be hard to get immediacy and spontaneity if you have to stop to make a piece of prefelt in the right colour, spin a piece of yarn or dye a piece of fabric, so I decided to do some work using an embellisher machine because that does give some immediacy to the process. I started by taking an old piece of handmade felt and laying down some random (repurposed) fabrics. I really didn't like what I had created but using my trusty view finder I found a small section that I did like, and it seemed to work both ways up which was interesting!:

I decided to have another go and this time this piece is showing more potential, albeit an experiment. I didn't have quite the right mustard colour but used what I had (an old jumper that had seen it's way into the fabric box) and felted that in, it worked well! This is the work in progress:

I like it as it is but it's a bit plain so I think it is a candidate for some experimental painting and stitching :) I rediscovered some paint experiments I did a while back and want to have another go. It's only a small piece approx 28cm x 23cm so it might be worth making a bigger one as well to have more room to work.

I also really like the back of this one. It's got a freedom about it and I especially like the way the embellisher pushes up loops of fabric. I do quite often like the back of pieces of felt!

I also chopped up some scraps of felt and made some wet felted samples. These came out a bit 'cartoony' as I outlined in black and white thread (forgot the lines would wiggle when felted, doh!) and kept the colours flat. Except for the square of fabric in the sky which I think was the most successful part of the pictures. When I felted these 4 they were very close together and a few bits attached so they were partially joined together. I snipped them apart but that's another discovery that could be quite interesting to attempt intentionally. It's all learning time :)

Another thing I've been playing with is my drum carder to mix up colours to make some interesting, very thin, prefelts to cut up and use in further works. So far I've felted two batts and I really like the results. It's very fragile felt because the fibres are running the same way in many places where I just sort of pushed and pulled it about to lay it out, and I have only lightly fulled it. It's very thin and has holes in places and is thicker in other places. It will either make interesting prefelt for inlays or will fall apart when I use it :)

I've carded two more, 1 using pinks and 1 using some more blues:

It got me thinking that I'd like to make a really big piece with this method and keep it as a big finished piece - maybe a landscape, but maybe just an abstract colourful thing depending on how it goes. It would also need some way of mounting as it's quite fragile. I'll do another post about that at some point as things progress. I have reconfigured my work space so I can make a 1 metre square piece. Wish me luck, it's got disaster written all over it! :)

Happy New Year! Getting Organised.

Some of my new pinboards with various samples pinned on

By Annie

Happy New Year!  Hope everyone had a lovely Christmas.

I don't really make New Year resolutions but this year I am definitely going to attempt to get more done creatively and make it a priority. Part of that is making sure my environment is more conducive to creativity. For me that involves being able to see everything but also having everything tidy enough to have mental breathing space and also space to work! I'm practising tidying up after myself and not letting the end of each task remain on the desk but back where it belongs.

I'm midway through a partial reorganisation of my creative space and it feels pretty good. I can see my entire sewing desk now, but it still feels like an inspiring place. I've chucked out some things that I decided were not "sparking joy" anymore (channeling my inner Marie Kondo!) and my favourite thing is that I've finally resolved my handmade felt "sketchbook" issue.

For ages I've been trying to figure out how best to organise my samples & experiments so they are useful and not just left in random boxes piled up. I've considered various things like making a giant fabric sketchbook or just pinning them in regular scrapbooks but that felt too inaccessible for how I want to work. I used to have things pinned on a few pinboards on the wall but they were not easily accessible as they hung above a desk and were also all wobbly as they were hanging on the picture rail, so I took them down and packed everything away again. However, I had a lightbulb moment recently and I bought some more pinboards, this time to use as sketchbook "pages", not up on the wall but free to sit on the floor, against the wall, or on the desk.

I unpacked all of my boxes of samples and experiments and a few random small pics and pinned them to the boards.

Now I can pin, unpin, rearrange and move the samples about and also I have a blank board where I can pick a few relevant bits and pin them like a working mood board.

The boards can travel round the room with me or stack up neatly like a giant book :)

This solution is relatively compact (compared to the plastic boxes) and is accessible and easy to use.

This is not completely everything - I still have some of the bigger pieces in a pile but it is a small manageable pile not a mountain of random disorganised odds n ends. It suits me because it is both messy (lots going on) and neat (easy to stack away).

Two of the boards that I have used mainly for free motion samples are sat on my newly tidied sewing desk. Feeling pretty smug about the tidy!

Now I've got space I might even finish the llama print pyjama trousers that I started making about 6 months ago!  Also, while sorting through my fibres and fabrics I've rediscovered quite a lot of nice fabrics that I had forgotten about.  Feeling newly inspired, I'm aiming to make a few small landscapes with some of them.

Btw, in case you were wondering, the cork in the background of some of the photos is my wonderful cork wall that I use to organise all of the house stuff and any bigger projects that I have on the go but it wasn't suitable to house my samples as they would just take over! :) 

Season's Greetings!

Thank you to everyone who has read our blog this year - we really appreciate all the lovely feedback we've had.  Let's hope that 2019 is a creatively fulfilling year for all!

Note to all fibre enthusiasts - have a look at this festive giveaway from ZED: The Right Fibre

Christmas Felt Tea Cosy

There are lots of pretty things you can buy for the kitchen to use at Christmas, but where do you store them for the rest of the year?

So I decided to decorate my felted tea cosy for Christmas in a way that would be temporary, so that as soon as Christmas is over I can remove the embellishments.

I made my felted tea-cosy in 2008 and it's still in daily use but only one side ever gets seen whether it's on the tea-pot or hanging on the kitchen wall...

...so I decorated the reverse side and that's the side that will show during the festive season.

After much pencil-end chewing I drew a rough design then, because I find proper drawing difficult, I searched the internet for a free-to-use outline of a deer. 

It's extremely difficult to draw a complicated shape directly onto felt and freehand cutting a deer out is beyond me.  Luckily there is an easy way using freezer paper.

I reversed the outline then traced it onto the paper side of a piece of freezer paper, then placed it, waxy side down onto a small, thin piece of white fulled felt.  I ironed the freezer paper onto the felt (1-2 minutes with a medium dry iron) then let it cool for half an hour.

I won't lie to you - cutting the white felt to the outline of the deer was very fiddly and I nearly lost some of the antler.  Next time I'll choose something simpler!  Holding my breath, I carefully removed the freezer paper.

I put a felting mat inside the tea cosy then I used a felting needle to 'tack' the white deer in place.  I should mention that my tea cosy is a chunky thing - it's thick and therefore easy to work on. I didn't go too near the edges of the silhouette for fear of splitting the white felt - even so the antler still went a bit wonky - so although tacking the deer shape in place would be ok for art work it wouldn't survive long on a working tea cosy!

The snowflakes are just wisps of white merino wool fibres loosely needle felted in.

The snowy 'ground' is fancy yarn. I used white thread to hold it in place - a small stitch every inch.

I liked all the blue and white but a small colour accent was needed so I cut a piece of Christmas ribbon to make a collar and attached it to the white felt with fabric glue.

When I'd finished I could see that I just had to make a new hanging hook the same colour as the tea cosy, so I knitted an i-cord from some sparkly crochet cotton.

All the embellishments are easily removable after Christmas.  The deer can be peeled off, the snowflakes popped out, the yarn unstitched and the forgiving felt will smooth itself out with a bit of gentle rubbing.  

But I'll keep the sparkly hanging hook - it looks good with the other side of the tea cosy!

Mr Snowman, Mrs Snowman and Rosie

I couldn't resist - I wanted to make another snowmen diorama to photograph for my Christmas cards.  

I made the snowmen and snow in the same way as before - details in these two previous blog posts:

snowmen 2015

snowmen 2017

The tree (aka a twig from the garden) is held upright with a lump of white-tack around its base and it's decorated with tiny merino wool balls and crystal beads threaded onto white sewing cotton.

I knitted the pink hat and scarf from crochet cotton on the smallest needles I had, then I made miniature knitting needles from cocktail sticks, stained with a grey marker and finished with sparkly beads, so that Mrs Snowman could carry on and finish knitting the scarf. 

The blue gift is simply a wrapped and beribboned cardboard cube but Rosie looks excited by it.

I hope the picture gives you a smile because I had great fun making it!