Felting and Stitching

Apart from a couple of pieces for notebooks, and the little flowers, I haven't made much felt lately. I did stitch some felt notebook covers but it's been so foggy and dark only one of the photos came out :(  It was a cover I made from the stripey piece I showed last time though, and although both sides looked great, especially once it was trimmed to size, I went for the stripey side:

I remembered another piece I've been adding stitching to slowly over the past year or so. I don't know if you remember when I tried some prefelt sent to me by Heidi Feathers? Well, the silk I'd used on one of the pieces didn't attach in a couple of places, so I added some stitching, then a bit more, and a bit more, etc! This is it now:

This is a fairly recent piece, from within the last few months anyway. I wanted it to look 'scribbley', like layers of drawing and scribbles:

And I know I said I'd show you some of the wet felting class nuno flowers when they were made up, but none of them have been yet, but Jo did bring in one of the dry ones she worked on, so this is it layered up while she hunted for a button for the middle:

Pink Diary Cover

I managed to finish the diary cover for my sister this week. Last time I posted I'd got as far as making pink batts and choosing the embellishments. I finished the layout the next day.

I wanted to create a feel of lots of different textures, but without it looking like it was 'piled' with embellishments. So after adding the fancy fibres and the cotton, silk, organza and synthetic fabrics, I added wisps of wool that I pulled from the batts. Close up of embellishments:

It took a long time to do the layout, so I didn't get chance to felt it until the next day. This is the piece when I'd just felted it and rinsed it:

I was taking lots of photos of the felting process for a tutorial and I think by repeating some of the steps for photos, I ended up fulling it a lot more than I usually do! It did shrink quite a lot.

Coincidentally, it shrunk width-ways to the exact size I needed for my notebook cover. This is a photo of the pieces cut out: Main piece, the front and back pieces for the closure flap, and the strip to cut two straps.

I didn't have the right colour thread for blanket stitching, so I made my own by splitting some lengths of embroidery floss in half and joining some pinks and lilac shades together. This is the front all finished:

And this is the back:

It does remind me a bit of a toilet roll cosy and I'm sure Barbara Cartland would have loved it, let's just hope my sister does :)

Mixed Media Book Cover and Camera Case

As much as I really liked the mixed media piece that I made last week as it was, I did want to make something out of it. I made sure the piece of fabric I worked on was big enough for a book cover, but the finshed piece was too thick for that. I turned it over, folded it, measured it, looked at it, thought about it, then decided I could make a book cover out of it if I cut it and used different felt for the inside flaps. So, more measuring, hunting for felt and sewing of felt to fabric. This is what the inside looked like before I'd quite finished the bottom edge:

And, this is what it looked like once all the edges were finished:

I'm not sure whether I prefer it with the red part on the front:

Or whether I like the blue better:

I had quite a good sized piece left over, and I actually really like the green part the best, so I thought I'd use it for a gadget/camera/phone case. This is one side:

And this is the other:

I really enjoyed making the mixed media piece and the cover and case, and I don't feel so odd for saving all the tiniest bits of felt scraps 'just in case' now :)