Finished Pieces

I'm still going through some unfinished projects at the moment, mostly blanket stitching, hand-sewing buttonholes and fighting with my machine :) I used one of the pieces of felt I'd made for the Australia Challenge on The Felting and Fiber Studio site to make a glasses case. I lined it with some orange cotton fabric and stitched around the edge with the machine before blanket stitching. Side one:

Side Two:

Earlier this year, when I made my coppery bronze felt, I had some pieces of commercial art yarn left over. I made a couple of small pieces of felt to use the pieces up. One of them just had pieces as embellishment just below the top layer of merino  and they extended out of the sides. For texture on the top of other piece, I made twists of merino and yarn. The felt pieces didn't look big enough or thick enough to make anything practical out of them, they weren't even the same size, so I thought it wouldn't be a waste to sew them together to make a funky camera case. It turned out better than I expected really :)

I used the piece made with twists as the back as it was smaller.

I did manage to finish off another purse that I started a while ago, another one made from felt and silk paper. I kept the natural edges for the front flap:

I was glad the felt piece was big enough to use the same felt for the inside pockets, I know only a little part of the back one is seen, but I think it'd look wrong with a plain piece.

If you go over to the Felting and Fiber Studio, we now have a 'Community' section to the website. If you hover over the tab, you can see from the drop down menu that we have pages for the Studio Challenges where you can find links to the original challenges, and also gallery sub pages to see all the art work created for the challenges from everyone who took part. If we've missed you off, we do apologise, there were quite a lot of posts here and on the forum to go through to find them. Send us a message via the Contact Us page if you want us to add your entry. Feel free to use the challenges at any time, they're great for for inspiration. There are also pages for finding links to interviews with guest artists and suppliers and also articles by guest writers. We have a really great article coming up this week from Terrie Kwong showing us how she gets her excellent results using plants for eco printing.

Catching Up

I've been trying to some of the projects I started before I began working on my polymer clay e-book. I had a few purses and glasses cases cut out or part sewn up. The first one I finished was a ruffle camera case. It hadn't even been cut out, so I did some measuring and cutting then discovered my electric machine won't work :( I cleaned out the bobbin case and took the parts off and wiped them and put them back, but the needle won't pick up the bobbin thread. From what I can tell it is timing or something and I don't think it's something I can fix. So, out came my ancient electric Singer without the electrical parts. It's slow going but it works, for straight stitching anyway :)  This is the front of the case:

And this is the back:

This was one of the purses I hadn't even blanket stitched, it's made from the same piece of felt as one I made earlier. It's a slubbed wool which I added some cotton and silk threads to and some strips of rolled edges from silk scarves. Front:

Inside:

The felt this wool makes has a really nice texture. Back:

A piece of coppery bronze felt that I made a while ago was just big enough to make a purse and matching glasses case:

I have to edit a few more photos then I'll be able to add the pink ruffley camera case and the bronze purse and glasses case to etsy later today.

Do you have piles of WIPs at different stages?