Completed Projects

The two main projects I was working on recently were my white textured felt piece and my stitched felt piece. I was working on them a little at a time when I got the chance, inspired by Ruth's Daily Dose of Fiber Challenge on the Felting and Fiber Studio Site. It took a while, but I finally finished the stitched felt piece, and I really like the way it turned out.

I thought I would never get a clear, bright enough day to photograph my finished white texture piece, but I finally did last week. I had to take it outside and use a large piece of cardboard because the locks make it about 27 inches from top to bottom. I used lots of different white wools on this piece, mostly to keep it soft and 'spongey'. English 56s, Swaledale, Texel and Cheviot were used for the main body texture. I used wool saved from my hand carders, scraps of cotton gauze and cheesecloth and carded lambswool between the layers to increase texture.

I tried something a little different with this piece, I left the centre without any wool when I laid out the first two layers, then added a piece of cotton gauze before the last two layers.

It worked out really well, you can see from this close up how a few wool wisps crept behind the gauze.

I added the locks around the sides at the same time I added the gauze. They kept their shape really well during felting and none of them tangled together.  The Angora, Wensleydale and Teeswater locks in this next photo show how nicely they turned out.

For surface texture I used cotton gauze, scoured Bluefaced Leicester and Wensleydale, raw Mohair, wool nepps, raw Gotland, Teeswater and Wensleydale locks, and embellishment fibres soybean top and silk noil.

I haven't had chance to work on anything for a few weeks, but I'm going to continue with Ruth's challenge as much as possible for the whole year, not just the first quarter, I think it has really helped for organising and to keep projects fresh in my mind, even if it just from relisting them each day in my diary :)