Felt! I've missed you!

I've had such a lovely time this weekend making and embroidering on Handmade felt. I ferreted around to find as many lovely textured bits to add to the layers and found little scraps of silk organza, recycled sari fibre, hand dyed scrim, and silk throwsters waste.

Look what happened! Felt is magic!

I embroidered it with number 5 perle WonderFil Eleganza threads. They are variegated colours and matched my felt so well. A few people have asked about the background under the felt. Its a page in my sketchbook where I've been playing with weathered and worn textures.

Crochet and Felt

At last week's Fabulous Felt course one of my learners was our Elizabeth, Director of the Community Learning Partnership. I have been running the course for a few years and she loves to see all the learners work but she has never really had the chance to make any felt herself. She is slightly addicted to wool though; the colours, its softness (its SMELL!!??) and all the amazing things can be made from those lovely wool tops! 

However, Elizabeth's greatest current addiction is Crochet. Whenever I go into the office she has crocheted something new or bought more delicious wool for our learners to use on our crochet courses. So it shouldn't be a surprise that she had been wondering if you could combine crochet with handmade felt.

The answer is, of course, YES!

Felt making is such an amazing adventure that we never stop learning how many different things you can do with it. The wackiest things work if you know the basics of how felt is made  
and you can embed all kinds of things into the fibres as they felt.

So this week, on part 2 of the course, she is going to bring some pieces of crochet to experiment with. In the meantime I had a little experiment of my own.

I found some gorgeous space dyed merino yarn in my stash and crocheted some circles of different kinds and sizes and added them to the bottom of of my seascape panel that I was using to demo felting to the class. As the felting was barely started the crocheted motifs adhered really well to the pre felt and moulded the bottom of the panel with some lovely curves.

I added shells and some stitching to finish it all off. I love adding crochet to felt! Thanks Elizabeth and lets see how our experiments turn out on Saturday. I'm really looking forward to seeing how everyone's felt turns out. It is always wonderful to see beginners turn into Fabulous Felters.

I will post some  photos of the class work next week. 

Ready to Fly!

One of my earliest blog posts on the 17th May had a doodle  from one of my sketchbooks that I had used as inspiration for a piece of handmade felt. 

I had a lovely time laying out the felt fibres using some of the colours in the sketch and then because I was so busy with my teaching schedule and because I had covered every available space  with art stuff I rolled up the fibres in their net and bubble wrap  and left them till the summer. I originally intended to add the details from the sketch into the final piece with stitching. I was going to 'doodle ' with the sewing machine to add the final touches.

I finally had time to finish felting it and here is the finished piece! at last!!

 I am so pleased with the way it has come together. Because it was made by wet felting, it has  a really dense rippley texture and the pattern on it has stayed in relief. Because I am an embroiderer and I am addicted to stitching I had to really make myself resist stitching this piece. I think it has enough detail now that it is finished and it is a good note to myself that I don't need to stitch on everything . 

You can see in this detail that it has a variety of different fibres on this panel Thin mohair, silk, curly hand dyed Wensleydale, hand dyed roving and lots of coloured merino. Just like painting with fibre! Hmmm What shall I do next???