Felted Flower

Creating one off, exotic flowers out of felt is both quick and easy.  Here is how.

You need some offcuts of prefelts, some wool fibre or top, scraps of scrim, lace and interesting yarns.  Choose some that have some contrast in colour and texture.

 

 

 

 

The next few photos show the layers.

Make a circle with the scrim or fabric.

Build your layers, adding wool as you go.

Once you have made all of your layers, mix some soap (I use dishwashing liquid) in hot tap water.  Wet the layers through with the hot, soapy water.

Place between two layers of bubble wrap and rub together between your hands.  Keep rubbing and agitating the layers until they start to bond together.  Re wet the felt as you need to and rub areas over the areas that are slower to felt together.  Keep rubbing until the layers are bonded together and the prefelt and wool are firm.

Once you are happy with it, rinse the felt in warm water to remove the soap.  Let it dry.  This is what mine looks like once dry.

Scrunch the back of the ‘flower’ gathering the centre together.  Try different layouts to see which way you like it to sit.  Stitch the back together to hold the shape.

Add some embroidery or beading to the centre of you flower.

You can now stitch this onto a bag, garment, quilt or jewelry finding.

Now you will need to make more.

 

 

12 Days of Christmas Project 11 – Felt Baby Mobile

Okay, here is one for the very little people, but like each of the previous projects it is as much about the techniques and adapting the ideas.

Okay, what do you need?  You need a metal or cane ring of about 20 cm diameter or something to make one out of; 1.5 metres of ribbon to cover the ring;  scraps of felt in at least two colours; about 10cms of vliesofix or other double sided web; a small amount of toy stuffing; six metres of fine ribbon and 1.5 metres of cord; scissors, sewing machine, thread and a small amount of craft glue.  Optional is some felt bits, like felt balls or flowers.  If you don’t want to use those, you can just make more stars.

I got these at Spotlight some time ago when they were having a sale, but check out what you have in your drawers before spending any money.  They are optional and in the end I did not use the creatures, though I still might add them in later.  Chunky beads work as well.

Start by preparing your ring.  If you have one cover it with ribbon, if not, make the ring with wire or firm plastic, bind the ends together (I used sticky tape to hold it in place until I got the ribbon around the sides).

Use a dab of craft glue to hold your ribbon end in place. Cover the whole ring and glue the end down when finished.

Print and trace the large star onto some cardboard or template plastic and cut out.

Then, trace the star onto your felt.  Each length on your mobile needs two stars.  I wanted four stars in total, so cut out 4 pink stars and 4 purple stars

Print and trace 8 of the small stars onto your vliesofix or other double sided web.

Iron them onto contrasting felt.  In this case, I ironed four pink and four purple stars.

Cut these out on the lines and after removing the backing paper, iron to the centres of the larger stars.  Create contrast.

I had intended to stitch some pink buttons into the centres here and the project would have benefited from the addition of the buttons, however I could not find them, so gave up.  You might add buttons or other embellishments at this stage.  You could stitch around the small stars too, but I did not.  The mobile will be unlikely to get washed in the time it is used, so it probably won’t make any difference.

Pair up your stars, with the right sides out.  Stitch just inside of the outside edges leaving one side of one point open.

Insert a small amount of toy stuffing into the stars.  Push the stuffing into the points, but don’t worry too much about filling it all evenly,  you just want to get a bit of body in there and you can massage it into place when you have finished stitching it up.

Cut your ribbon into six half metre pieces.

Tuck one end of the ribbon into the open side of the star and with it tucked in a little, stitch the opening closed, catching the ribbon and holding it in place.  Repeat for your other stars.  Tie off any threads and trim away.

Make the felt flower lengths next.  To do this, tie a knot at the end of your remaining two lengths of ribbon and, one at a time, thread the ribbon into a tapestry or upholstery needle.  Push the needle through the felt bits stringing them onto the ribbon.  You may need to get some pliers to help you pull the needle through.  Pliers give you better grip and some leverage which helps pull the ribbon through the felt bits.

Once you have all six strings ready to go, tie them to the ring, varying the length so that each is a bit different.  Spread the six strings evenly around the ring.

Trim off the extra ribbon.

To create the hanger, cut your cord into three half metre lengths.  Tie the three together with a knot.  You might decide to add a loop or hook, but the knot will be sufficient and is easy.

Tie the three cords evenly around the ring, ensuring that the ring will be even and verticle when hung.

And you are done.

Nuno Felted Scarf

Hi there I made this yesterday (and a little bit today ’cause I needed to pace the felting – how bad is that).

this was made with one of my new Nuno Felting kits in Purple Passion.

Here is a quick tutorial on how.

The kit has hand dyed silk georgette and some Ashford Silk/Merino blend.  You need to add some bubble wrap, hot water and soap and a lot of energy.

Lay your bubble wrap down on the table and spread the fabric over the top.

Spread your fibre out in a pattern or an even coverage.  The fibre will lock into the fabric so you don’t need to create layers like you would with conventional wet felting.

Mix soap into a bucket of hot water.  I just use dishwashing liquid but you might choose to use something nicer.  Wet the whole area thoroughly ensuring that the wool fibre is wet through.

Roll the whole wet bundle up into the bubble wrap.  I also wrap the bundle with an old towel to get some friction.  Rub the bundle backwards and forwards, placing pressure on different places as you go.  Rub like crazy checking the felting process as you go.

Unroll and then re-roll the bundle a couple of times to change the point of pressure.

When you are close to finished, you will see that all of the wool is bonded and the fabric will be gathering as the wool shrinks.  Once finished, rinse in warm water with a dash of vinegar to clean and freshen the fibre.

Here is some detail of my finished piece.  See how the fabric has puffed and gathered between the grid of wool.

The Nuno Felting packs have more comprehensive instructions and some layout options for you to play with.

 

 

In Brisbane, ready to set up

Well, it has been a long day, but we are in Brisbane and have unpacked the truck load of stock and fixtures ready to set up the stand tomorrow.  This show is the tenth anniversary of my first ever craft show.  Tomorrow, I will load a really interesting comparison.  I was confused today, because I have moved from the E aisle to the D aisle.  But while looking for my stand, I found one that is almost exactly our first ever stand.  I will explain tomorrow, but I was a bit overwhelmed looking back to our very humble and naive beginnings.

On an unrelated matter, I promised to show you the felting I did last week.  I will load step by step instructions on the free info page when I get back home.  I have this sample here for those of you coming to the Brisbane show, but here is a quick picture.  I used a heavy weight prefelt as the base, some maroon coloured cotton scrim, burgundy and green wool top and a heap of rubbing.

As always, interested in your comments.

Today’s offerings

I am waiting for a couple of deliveries this morning.  I need the stuff NOW, but I need to be patient.  There is always more to be done, so instead of watching for trucks, I should get stuck in and get some work done.

Last night I made another non woven collage.  It is a bit wonky, but will straighten up when I quilt and block it.  This one uses a hand dyed wool felt as the background.  The focal point are three photos I took at Floriade.  I printed them and the word Floriade on to TAP and then ironed onto the heavy weight Lutradur.  Metal foil on light weight lutradur for the metallic strip went on next and then purple and blue lutradur was agressively heated around my photos as a frame.  I heated it with the heat gun after stitching the layers together.  I really like this effect.  It is a quick and easy three dimensional effect that adds colour and texture at the same time.  The orange is a piece of cotton scrim that I scrunched and distorted.  I quite like the over all effect. What do you think?

Floriade 2010 captured

I also played with some of the new Liquitex inks while I was taking a break between bouts of felting.  I like these inks, because they can run and blend but are also opaque.  You don’t need to heat set them to be colourfast either.  Given I iron all my patchwork and art quilts as I go this is probably not relevant, but there could well be a time when it is important.

Here are the inks I used.  They come in a pack of six and there are two themes.  I, naturally, went for the shiniest.

Liquitex Metallic 6 pack of inks

I am not sure what I am going to do with the fabric, other than have it to show people.  I smudged the gold, copper and bronze to blend them in a bit and then splattered the white, black and silver. 

Fabric with inks. A bit over the top, but I wanted to see what they did.

I will show you the felting when I get it dry and into a quilt top.  Which will be behind about 20 other things I MUST finish today.  Off to work.  Where is that truck!

An exciting night of debate and champions

I am excited.  No more work will get done tonight!

I am sitting here with the Political leaders debate on in the background, a fabulous rich beef and root vegetable casserole bubbling on the stove, ready to switch to the Masterchef whether the debate is over or not.  The casserole needed a significant amount of red wine as an ingredient, so I have a glass of that in hand.  All the things I need for a perfect evening.  Now don’t judge me, but I am a shocking political junky and never am more excited than during an election campaign.  AND I love Masterchef.  I don’t see it as anything more than a fabulous entertainment program, don’t expect to find myself at any of their restaurants in the future, but have found that the ideas each night have invigorated my cooking and re energised my interest in food.  I hope Adam wins.  If there are lots of desserts, Adam is in trouble.  So hopefully it will be balanced.   I think Callum is lovely and makes great desserts, but he has gotten through by having good friends who picked him on winning teams which saved him rather than being a consistent cook. And he is barely older than my eldest, which is not his fault, but I judge him for anyway.  Not fair, I know.  I would not let Stephen loose with $100,000 to make decisions about. That is my opinion and I will say no more.

Today, amongst a hundred other things, I (and Glenn) have sorted, counted and loaded on the website a range of pre felts.  I love the colours, I love the product, but I don’t love the manufacturer, so once these are gone I will never have them again.  I have my own versions in the pipe line which I will introduce once I have sold most of these.  They are over 25% off the RRP, so check them out and PLEASE take them off my hands.  Here are some photos.

piles all over my family room floor

A close up. The colours are GREAT

There are two weights.  Light and Heavy.  The micron of the wool in these is fairly coarse – 26 micron.  If you are going to wear these, get a light weight one and mix a nice Merino and some silk into it.  The heavy is great for bags, wall hangings, and texture.

The light version is see through and needs more work

The Heavy will take a lot more felting, will be easy to felt other fibres into, but will also stand on their own as is.

Ready for Perth – not really

I fly out for Perth tomorrow. We have spent the weekend dyeing and packing a tonne of silk and wool as well as what felt like a truck load of dyes.  In between all of that, I have put together a couple of samples and loaded the first session of my second online class – the Riverbed Art Quilt Class.  I look forward to hearing how everyone is going with it.

Here is one of the samples:

Don’t mind the sticky tape holding it to the door.  This started as two prefelts, hand and washing machine felted, then textural applique, needle felted yarn as stems and some hot fix crystals to add some bling.

Works in progress

Today was beautiful here, a perfect winter day.  The forecast was for showers, but fortunately, for me anyway, they stayed away.  A mild day with a gentle breeze – PERFECT for drying! 

Here is the silk batt that was in the dye pot yesterday.  It is a new colour for my silks.  So far I have dyed batts, caps, mulberry and tussah silk top in this colour way.

I have been knitting lately, much to the shock of everyone who knows me.  This is largely due to access to some stunning wools from Carol at  Rainbow Wools.  Some of the pieces I have been knitting have been made so that I can felt them.  Checkout the before and after felting pictures below.  What will I do with these next?  Watch this space.