Thursday 30 March 2017

Soft Wispy Felt Tutorial

It has taken about 5 times as long as I thought it would, but I have finally finished my 'Learn to Make: Soft Wispy Felt Tutorial'.


I'm sure most of you have seen my pieces of soft, scruffy, felt piled with embellishment fibres:


And also the weird sculptural things I like to make out of them:


They're so enjoyable to make and so bright and 'happy' to look at. They were designed for a well-being class, with the intention that it’s virtually impossible to get a bad result. They're multi-layered, built up of fine layers of Merino and novelty yarns, to produce soft, fine, wispy, cobwebby felt that is pleasantly ‘scruffy’, ‘tassley’ and heavily decorated, so that even if they're wonky, threadbare, thick or holey in places, every one will still be a beautiful decorative piece.


There is lots of info in the tutorial with advice about supplies and equipment, though bubblewrap and margarine tubs is pushing it a bit to be called 'equipment'! :) I think the most expensive thing I use is the Olive Oil soap! Each piece only uses about 15g of wool, about 3 or 4 metres/yards of novelty yarns and a small handful of fibres, so it's great for a beginner's piece, especially for someone who has a generous friend to donate supplies to get them addicted to interested in wet felting! And there is also info on how to turn your flat piece into something even weirder for your friends to ponder 'but what is it for?' All the info is on the Information page, it's available as an 'instant download' (once you've received an email... can't make it too instant or Europeans will get stuck with an extra chunk of VAT!)

Wednesday 1 March 2017

Bright Nuno Felt

Some slightly more 'conventional' nuno felt this week. Well, conventional to me anyway :) I made a piece similar to this first one a while ago and it was really popular and I thought I could improve on it a bit, so I thought I'd make another one:


I'm thinking that next time I make something which is 'double sided', I'm going to flip the layout over when I've finished the first layer, because the top always looks better than the underneath. It looks alright, but was definitely better on the side I worked on:


I love the shiny ripples of silk nuno:


I used a strip torn from a viscose scarf on another piece I made:


I think you can see the ripples a bit better on an angle:


The ripples were so uniform and neat, I couldn't decide which close up to use, so I'm posting 3 :)