Pods and cords

We've been exploring resists at the Well Being centre recently, and one of the group said she'd really like to make a round vessel, so I thought we'd follow rosiepink's vessel tutorial. It turned out there was only 2 of us there early enough to have a go, so we did it again this week, but this is mine:

Here's the other side:

I've been looking for 'smoothing tools' for vessels for years, like Lyn's suggestions of a baby's rattle or laundry liquid dispenser, I keep checking the baby section, and dog toy section, even the kitchen section for a ladel, but still haven't found one! I did buy some foam for resists though and  I thought I'd try it out and make a new birdpod. I remembered those coconut ones, and tried to do a similar shape. It didn't get it quite right, but using lots of coarse wools did give it a hairy coconut look, though:

I need to make a cord for it to hang it up. Usually, I make cords from offcuts or make some handspun yarn and felt that, but I had an idea for some garden ornaments and thought I'd give it a go using a bamboo mat. I can't remember which wool I used, I think it was something from Wollknoll labelled just 'Scottish grey'. I had a hard time getting photos of all my things, it went too dark yesterday, so this morning I took them into the garden and tried them in a few places, when I put the first cord down on the paving stones it camouflaged itself, even the pattern seems to match!

That was just the test piece for the idea I wanted to try. The only trouble was, I needed a larger mat than a placemat. I looked at my living room blinds, just hanging there with a huge roll of unused bamboo sat at the bottom. I unrolled it and there must have been two feet of spare blind, so a few snips and a few tied ends later, I had a shorter window blind and a new rolling mat! This cord hasn't completely dried yet, but I know I need to make the next one a bit thinner, and I think that will help it be firmer too, but it turned out a lot better than I expected:

Flowers, Fimo and Felt

After the nuno flower workshop at the well-being centre last week, I thought I'd make a few flowers of my own as they don't require too much effort. They're mostly layers of cotton gauze or scrim, wisps of merino, another piece of gauze and finer wisps on top. I haven't sewn them together yet because I want to put organza on the back of some. But I did hunt through my fimo buttons to find the right ones:

I'm running low on buttons now, I don't have as wide a variety of colours as I thought, so I might have to make some more. I had a look through my fimo tiles last week too, and put some magnetic strips on a few to make fridge magnets. These are some of my favourites:

I like making the inlaid ones, they're quite easy to do, but look impressive :) If you're interested in tiles, buttons, pendants etc, I do have a very reasonably priced (cheap!) Polymer Clay e-book which shows my very simple method for making nice, even flat polymer clay. And how to do it without expensive tools, too!

I made a bright patchy piece of felt last week, mostly Merino, but with some strips of silk and gauze:

I thought I'd go a few steps brighter and made a stripey piece with vivid merino shades and gave it some sparkle with dyed trilobal nylon, milk, viscose, rose fibre and bamboo:

 I prefer the colours on the right hand side and prefer the back even more:

New Year, Old Stuff

I have one more pice that I made just before Christmas that I haven't done anything with yet. I planned it so that the red to purple rainbow stripes in the centre would fit around an A5 notebook, and the stripes at the ends would be the flaps inside. But it didn't shrink enough for that. And isn't quite long enough to fit on an A5 ringbinder.

This is the back:

After the craft fair I made a few more camera cases, it was nice to sit and sew without any pressure of having to get it done by a certain time. These are from a grey merino and grey/pink synthetic fabric nuno piece I made a while ago. Sorry about the odd photos, there was a weird blue light here today.

These are slightly bigger and made from burgundy merino and a kind of tulle synthetic fabric nuno.

I haven't had chance to do much at all lately, I thought I'd have to file my tax returns soon, so have been frantically listing, categorising and printing all week. It turns out the 31st Jan deadline is for the 2012-2013 tax year, which I filed in April last year. I didn't feel silly about that when I phoned up trying to file tax returns 3 months early :)
You might remember a post on the Felting and Fiber Studio site from last year about expanding the felting and fiber community. I just wanted to remind everyone that we are still interested in having guest posts, articles, features etc if anyone would like to contribute to the site? If you'd like an idea of some of the posts others have contributed, hover over  'Community' on the menu bar and you will see the various categories. It doesn't have to be original, it can be something you've used on your own site, as long as it is about felt, fabric, wool or fibres or anything related like threads, tools, farming, production, supplies, selling etc we'd love to include it :)  Use the Contact Form at the top of the site or PM us on the forum.

I thought I'd add a supermacro of locks, just because :)

Craft Fair and Some New Pieces

I did my first craft fair on Saturday. It was only a small one, the nice people at the LGBT Centre in Manchester asked me if I'd like to take a few things to sell between the Carol Service and Christmas Dinner at their Festive Funday. For the past couple of weeks I've done a lot of blanket stitching, a lot of printing and a lot of cutting out of tags and business cards. And who'd have thought writing and attaching tags could take a whole day?!
I didn't think to ask what size the table would be and not knowing which items might be popular, I decided to take pretty much everything I've ever made! Ann from The Felting and Fiber Studio talked about getting ready for a show a few weeks ago, well I don't drive, so I have to walk or get public transport everywhere, so over the last couple of years I've relied on my 'granny trolley' to cart things about:

Using a shoe box, old toaster box and a couple of smaller cradboard boxes, I managed to fit in: 7 x A5 Diaries/notebooks;  8 x A6 notebooks; 3 x iPad/gadget cases; 10 x camera cases; 6 x glasses cases; 4 x credit card cases/pouches; 9 x coin pouches;  7 x coin purses/wallets; 2 x mirror cases; 2 x ring pouches; 4 x placemats/coasters; 23 bookmarks; 4 x felt pieces; 2 x shoulder bags and a woolly vessel. I think I took too many things! This is one of the diary covers I finished in time for the fair:

This is an iPad case. I was going to use the felt for a diary cover, but it didn't shrink as much as I expected, so I searched online for the dimensions of the most popular tablets and made this. It has rainbow felt on the front and back and also a piece of neoprene stitched to the back:

This is another piece of felt I made last week. I made two the same, and sold one at the fair:

It was a great experience doing the fair and I met so many nice people and got lots of compliments. Although it was only on for about an hour I managed to sell more things than I have in the last 9 months on etsy :) I'm looking forward to my next one.