Craft class - Felted pod

Earlier in the month I went to a workshop at Needle and Thread in the deepest, darkest countryside of Lincolnshire.  It wasn't dark at all actually, it was a beautiful sunny day.  This was a new workshop destination for me, I'd seen they were doing a class on felted pods and fancied having a go.  I'll definitely be going back, lovely workshop, very friendly staff and amazing food!

The tutor was Robyn Smith, a lovely lady who was very knowledgeable and had devised a great class.  There were only 2 of us students, so we got a lot of attention.  The idea was to make a 3d wet felted vessel, using techniques to add 3d elements.  We started with the vessel.  A layer of merino was placed over a resist (a piece of plastic table cloth), then felted.  Wet felting involves soap, water and lots of rubbing and rolling.

We folded the wet edges over the resist, then added another layer of merino on this side and felted it.  I didn't take a photo of that.  We then put it to one side to work on the embellishments.

Above is a rope, this will be added to the vessel to give some texture and dimension.  It was made by laying out small pieces of merino, then rolling them up, adding water and soap and rolling more.

This is a spike, to go on the base of the vessel.  I wanted a few, so I tried a few different things, here I twisted two colours of merino roving together before felting.  The outcome of these two-coloured spikes was very hard to predict, well for me anyway!  The base of the spike is left unfelted so it can be attached to the vessel later.

Here you can see the rope, three spikes, and three balls.  The balls were not fully felted so that they will attached to the vessel.  I made another 6 spikes after this.

We also had a go at making pre-felt to add cut out shapes to our vessels.  I made a thick piece of felt by piling up lots of layers of roving.

A bit of wet felting later and I was left with this which I could then cut into.

Then came the fun bit - layering and arranging the embellishments.  I started with my spiral - the centre of the spiral will be where I cut the hole later.  I put the spikes around the edge as equidistant as I could and put the other embellishments in between.

On the left is one of the balls I made, then a little stack of the pre-felt, finally a few tufts of merino, then a piece of packing tape cut into a circle.  This will be removed later and is to form a crater.  I didn't add a fin which was another embellishment we could have made.

I put some bright pink merino over the packing tape circles to provide a coloured lip to the crater.

Then it was time to make the batt for the top of the vessel.  Of course, we could have used one colour of merino, or stripes, but we were offered a go on the carder, so of course, I had to have a go!  I have used one before, many years ago when I learnt to spin, and I have to say it's still as much fun!  You push bits of merino in a variety of colours in at the front, it is grabbed on the spikes as you turn the handle.  

This is what it creates - a batt of a mixture of colours.  You can then tear it up and put it through again for more of a blend.

Two layers of the batt were put on top of the design

I also added some of this curly fleece and a few strands of silk - the fleece is the white, the silk is the dark green.

It was all gently covered with plastic, then we rubbed and rolled and rubbed and rolled and rubbed and rolled...

and rubbed and rolled some more!

We cut our holes, mine was centrally in the spiral.  Out came the resist (with surprisingly little effort), then we had to do some pulling and pushing and rubbing inside to get the shape we wanted and make sure the inside and edges were well felted.  I stuffed it full of plastic carrier bags to keep its shape whilst it dried.  You can also see in the picture above that I'd cut the holes for the craters and removed the resists.

It took several days to dry, and this is what I'm left with!  You can just make out the rope spiral towards the top.  It was not as pronounced as I'd imagined.  I perhaps should have started with a thicker rope.

The small purple patch is the stack of pre-felt with the colour coming through.  To its right, you can see a pink circle - that's the crater.  They worked pretty well.

Unfortunately, the balls all but disappeared.  I perhaps didn't work the final layer of felt over them well enough, or maybe they also weren't big enough.

Here's a view of the inside.  It's blue as that's what I started with, the base layer underneath my resist.  

And for some reason I took a picture of the bottom!  I thoroughly enjoyed this class and was chuffed to bits with my "alien" at the end of the class. I'd definitely take a class at Needle and Thread again, and a class with Robyn.  I also want to try out some other ideas I have for wet felting... just got to get that damn studio finished!!

improptu felting

I felt a little down one night, so I went to see my friend after work.  She soon sorted me out - she got out the felt and got me working my arm muscles!

She had bought me a notebook so I can do some journalling and had intended to make me a cover, but decided I could do it myself.  The above arrangement is the wool and tops laid out in my chosen "design".  I went for really bright colours because I love them!

Then there was rubbing with hot water and soap, more rubbing, turning, rubbing, turning rubbing, then rolling, rolling, rolling, rolling....  When I got home I soaked it in a little vinegar to get rid of the soap and laid it out to dry.  

It is still laying out to dry.  It IS dry, it's been dry for ages... I just haven't had the time to make it into a book cover yet!

Felting is so good for stress release, and I'm sure it must count as exercise?

needle-felted bee

Towards the end of December, me and wonderful mum went to a new-to-us venue, Straight Curves in Chesterfield, Derbyshire.  They have some really interesting classes and judging by all the class samples displayed in the classroom, I think we might be going again!

We took the Needle-felted Bee class.  Looking at the website, it says Carol Wilson was the tutor, I hope that's right!  I really must try to be better at taking down tutor's names to credit them.

It was a really good workshop in a lovely venue and I even took some photos during the class!

I have needle-felted before.  I made a flat picture at home and we did needle-felted brooches at one of the Speed Craft sessions, which involved needle-felting into a biscuit cutter.  This was my first time 3d felting.  Above you can see my sponge, the bee shape I created using Jacob wool and the needle felting tool which is different to my Clover 3-needle tool.  We got to keep this one!

I have only felted with merino wool before, this was a lot fuzzier but just as good to work with.  Putting the stripes on took judgement about thickness and placement.  We had lots of pictures of different bees to work from, but I just went with a stereotypical bee.

Felting the wings was really hard!  I attacked them several times with scissors and had to start again!  I added a few embroidery stitches for the veins.

And here is my little bee all finished!  He's on a brooch back, but I won't wear him until the summer.  The tutor had hers mounted on a small piece of wet felted "landscape" in a wooden frame.  I quite like that idea and may, possibly, one day, get round to it!

This bee is very messy underneath, but hey, you shouldn't be looking at bee's undersides!

Doing the class gave me an urge to needle felt (though I wasn't well afterwards so didn't) and writing this post is making me want to needle felt...  I've got a couple of books and some merino at home!

Classes at the Knitting and Stitching Show

Happy New Year! I hope 2017 treats you all kindly (and me!)

Back in November last year, wonderful mum and I went to the Knitting and Stitching show in Harrogate.  We spent 2 days there, staying at the hotel across the road so we didn't have to take our coats with us and could return excess shopping to the room during the day!  We also took part in 4 classes.  I have to say, I do not know the names of any of the tutors, very lax of me, I know.

One of the classes was wet felting a flower.

This is slightly different from the wet feting I've done in the past as we used short strands of wool rather than merino.  The felting technique included picking it up and splatting it against the table repeatedly!

My finished flower came out too large for a brooch, though I would like to have another go with a smaller one.  This class was brilliant, we all had such a good time.

Another excellent class was Broderie Anglais, where we used a stiletto to make the holes in the fabric.  I hadn't realised it was such a simple (though time consuming) technique and I thoroughly enjoyed it.  The tutor was great as was her assistant.  I think she was from Peru.

The classes were only an hour which is why I didn't achieve very much.

We also did goldwork with Sarah from Golden Hinde.  I remember her name as I have met her a few times, she's lovely and very helpful.  We used pearl purl to make these simple but effective goldwork brooches.

The finished piece will fit in this brooch back.  Of course, I haven't yet completed either of the pieces from the classes!  They will show up in this year's WIP list.

The fourth class was absolutely appalling.  The teacher was rude, confrontational, disorganised and useless as a teacher.  We were supposed to be making ribbon flowers.  Apparently there are 2 techniques.  The one she showed us was different to the one on the hand out and she got very angry if we tried to follow the written instructions.  I actually walked out of the class.  

I'm going to be back later in the week with my list of WIPs to be tackled this year.  Then I need to find some linkies to help keep myself accountable.  If anyone knows of any, please let me know!

Speed Craft #4 - needle felting

My previous post was about the Speed Craft event me and wonderful mum attended at Debbie Bryan.  If you want to know what it's all about, scroll down and read that post.

Our forth session of the day was needle felting.  I have done this before but it's always good to see how other people do things, particularly when you're self-taught.

We used biscuit cutters as the base.  There was no bunny but I wouldn't have chosen it anyway.  As soon as I saw this t-rex I was sold!



No in-progress shots as I was too busy stab, stab, stabbing!  I did Mr Dinosaur in turquoise on white.  I wanted him to be holding a carrot, but there were no orange tops so I made a flower / lollipop instead.  That is actually his hand holding the flower, but now it looks to me like it's his bottom jaw and he's eating it!

I was running out of time (remember we only had 45 minutes), so I quickly sewed a brooch back on.

Due to the time constraints, I glued a second layer of white felt at the back and then cut round it.  The turquoise in the middle of the sandwich is where the felt comes through when you're stabbing it.

Yes, I am 38.  Yes, I am wearing a dinosaur brooch.  I wore it to work and everyone was very careful not to mention it!

Breaking needles

I have done a little needle felting in my time, never anything 3d (must give that a go) and not much.  Back in November I had an urge to needle felt, so got out my supplies of wool roving, my needle tool and my foam pad.  The needle tool holds 3 felting needles which differ to sewing needles in that you can't thread them and they have little barbs on them which grab hold of the wool and make it felt (magically, I don't understand the science behind it).  Those needles are sharp.

Abd fragile.  

Unfortunately they were the only needles I had and I'd managed to break all three in one foul swoop.  (Is that the right expression?  Is it foul swoop or fell swoop or something else entirely?)  I had to put the needle felting to one side whilst I waited for some more to come in the post.

When they did, I felted this vase of flowers and made it into a card for my mum's birthday.  The flower centres are little jewels that I glued on afterwards.

I didn't design this card, I took it from Beginner's Guide to Needle Felting by Susanna Wallis, and I really enjoyed it.  I'm not quite sure why the roving and needles got put away after that as I had planned on making more.

The reason I'm showing you this now, rather than the beginning of November when I made it, is that I forgot to take a photo and only just got one from my mum.

Craft Book Review - Felting Fabulous Flowers

Pavilion very kindly sent me a copy of Felting Fabulous Flowers by Gillian Harris to review for you all.

Before we go any further, the disclaimers.  I was sent the book for free to review but I was not told what to say and all opinions are 100% my own.  I didn't receive any monetary compensation.  Links in this post, as with all my book posts, are affiliated.  If you click over and buy something, I get a few pence towards an Amazon voucher.  

I'm embarrassed to say that it's taken me quite a while to get round to reviewing this for you and I'm not sure why as when I got started, I really enjoyed it.

The book has 23 different flower patterns and some leaf shapes too.  The flowers are divided by colour and each given a rating of easy, intermediate or advanced.

There are some truly beautiful flowers included.  Look at that amazing passion flower!  Yes, that one is advanced!

The cosmos flower is the bottom right of the above photo, this is one that I chose to make.  All of the flowers are a mixture of wet and dry (needle) felting.

I didn't have any green merino tops to hand, so I didn't attempt any of the leaves, but they'd look fabulous is a bouquet or with a flower as a corsage.

Each flower has it's own page of instructions, then there are instructions for the various felting techniques at the end, followed by the full-sized templates.

I decided to make the daisy and the cosmos (though in blue!), so I started making some felt.  My white felt ended up rather thick.  It's been a long time since I made felt and I overestimated how much it shrinks.

I actually used two different shades of turquoise for the second piece of felt.  One colour on the front...

...and the other on the back.

It's not easy to see the difference, but there is one!

I cut out the cosmos shape from the turquoise felt and decided the lighter colour would be the front.  I added some needle felted veins in the darker turquoise, which are hard to see, and did a simple needle felted centre rather than the balls in the original.  This flower needs shaping with some Mod Podge or fabric stiffener to give it more shape.

The daisy is made up of two layers of petals with a yellow centre needled to make it a dome shape.

I liked this so much I added a brooch pin and it's already on my winter coat.  I know, daisies aren't very wintery but I don't care!

I have a few of Gillian Harris's felting books and all of them are fabulous.  The projects are lovely, the photography is gorgeous and the instructions are good.  This book is no exception and I actually want to try each and every flower in this book.  I think they'd make a wonderful bouquet to put in a vase on the table.  

If you have any interest in felting, whether you're a seasoned felter or are completely new to it, I'd recommend this book.  The instructions are good enough for a beginner to make their first piece of felt and try their hand at needle felting, and the projects are varied enough to interested the more advanced felter.

Product details Hardcover: 80 pages Publisher: Collins & Brown (3 July 2014) Language: English ISBN-10: 1909397393 ISBN-13: 978-1909397392 Product Dimensions: 1.3 x 21 x 21 cm

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Something New for 2014

  

Disclaimer:

I was given a review copy of the book by Pavilion, however this review and all opinions are 100% my own, I was not told what to say.  Amazon links are affiliate links.