Felt Cases

The May challenge on the felting forum is 'Practical Felting- Create something with a useful purpose'. My new camera needs a case, so I thought I'd have a go at making one.
After another fruitless search of the internet for a tutorial, I decided to work it out for myself (apparently, maths can be used for other things besides working out how much fibre I need to order and how much it'll cost!)
So, after lots of measuring, re-measuring, dividing and multiplying, I ended up with.... 2 foam rectangles as resists for a camera case and ipod case.
I won't pretend I ended up with 2 perfect cases after my first try, but they turned out okay and I found they are easy to adapt.


I re-did the camera case a couple of days later with 4 thin layers, and got the size and thickness I wanted.

If you'd like to try making a case with a flat resist, I made a picture set on flickr, here
And if anyone has any tips for making cases- I'd love to hear about them.

I also made a very simple camera case by sewing 3 pieces of felt together yesterday, and made a photo set for this on flickr, too

I must say thankyou to Linda from craft gossip who did a really nice article about me and my felted vessel tutorial :)

And if anyone has any helpful how to's or tutorials they'd like to share, please leave a link in the comments, I'd love to see them :)

Book Review

I'm fairly new to wet felting and don't really know much beyond laying wool tops in opposite directions and incorporating other fibres into the top layer, so I thought I'd treat myself to a book. I had a look on amazon and decided to get 'Complete Feltmaking by Gillian Harris'. It promised to carefully explain each feltmaking technique in detail with step by step instructions so that no matter how inexperienced you are, it is difficult to go wrong. It covers needlefelting, wet felting, knitting and fulling, and advanced felting techniques. Sounded perfect.

I don't know anything about knitting so don't feel qualified to judge that section's instructions, but I've looked through all the wet felting and needle felting projects, and there are some major problems with this book.
The first wet felting instructions are explained quite well, but after that, instructions are vague... 'make a circle, add a spot, make a polka dot, bunch up some fleece into a round pouch shape' etc, and it doesn't tell you 'how'.
Also, the photos are practically useless, instead of a few photos clearly illustrating the instructions, they give a whole page to a photo of the finished item, then use a cropped version again on almost a whole page, where they could have fit another 4-6 photos. The photos they do have accompanying the stages are 'arty' and blurred and contribute practically nothing.

A typical 4 page layout for a project:

Another thing I found strange, was there was no order to the projects, they went from 'intermediate' to 'beginner' to 'advanced' then back again, randomly. The needle felt section starts with an 'advanced' project.
The oddest thing was incomplete instructions for how to make a bag, which were then repeated 10 pages on, this time without the blurry photos but with one additional step-'make a handle using the instructions from a few pages earlier'. This one extra detail took 4 pages.

After reading this book, I'm non the wiser than I was before reading it, and many of the tips go against other things I've read, like leaving felt on resists/lasts to dry (didn't the felt shrink too much for that?)
It's a shame, because the project ideas look really good.

Nuno Felted Silk Scarf

I picked up some gorgeous dyed silk scarves a few years ago, and they've been packed in a box ever since. So, I thought I'd have a go at felting one. I picked one out then chose the shades of merino tops to go with it:

It was quite long-38 inches, so I hoped I'd be able to felt it solely by rolling, so that I'd be able to use the technique for larger felted pieces that I don't have enough room for felting the way I usually do. I'd say it felted about 80%, which is okay for felted artwork, but probably not for anything wearable or artwork with textures/added fibres. I finished it off by rubbing on bubblewrap.

Merino side:

silk side:

I started with a reed table runner, then put bubble wrap on top, then the scarf/merino and finally netting, I rolled it up tight, then gave it a lot of rolling-even using my feet. I then unrolled, turned the scarf round 180 degrees, then repeated.
So, if anyone has any tips for making sure it's fully felted by just rolling, I'd be really grateful :)

Pictures of full scarf Here

Lots of new fibres!

On Thursday I took a trip to Huddersfield to visit World of Wool.
It's a great place and the people are so nice and friendly.
You are personally shown round to look at, touch and smell all the great wools and fibres they have...my favourite was the milk protein fibre- looks, smells and feels gorgeous.
I was quite restrained and just bought a few shades of merino, some oatmeal Bluefaced Leicester and bamboo top
L-R Bamboo top, Black Bamboo top, oatmeal Bluefaced Leicester

We had a second Fibre Swap on the Felting Forum recently, my swap partner was Cytel . I couldn't wait to open my parcel when it arrived today, and had a great time looking at and feeling all the great fibres and fabric samples I received:

The top row is 4 natural Alpaca shades and Alpaca hand dyed with natural dyes in Peru.
The middle row is a greeny merino and silk blend, a hand dyed blue angora and polwarth 50/50 blend, and an earthy coloured hand dyed roving 100% targe top.
The bottom row is: Silk throwster's waste; raw fleece-merino cormo cross; very bright merino tops
I think I'll enjoy using all these :)

Nuno Felting

A couple of months ago I experimented with nuno felting-using fabrics with wet felting, and enjoyed it a lot.
Here is a set on flickr...most of the early experiments ended up as part of the collage piece in the set

This week I layed out a few more nuno felt pieces, but I've only wet felted 2 so far.
For the first one, I cut up squares from silk scarves that I've tried before, these are very light and felt really well. I added these to a base of 3 layers of turquoise merino, and added a few wisps of merino on top in a couple of places
This is how it looked before felting:


And this is how it looked after:

The second piece was an experiment with scrap pieces, the rolled edges I'd torn from silk scarves, messy scrunched silk, scrap organza and silk sari yarn- all added to merino randomly and topped with wisps of merino.
Before felting:

After felting:

I don't think all the different colours work well on one piece, it looks too busy, but I liked the effects and will use them again but keep the colours simpler.

Wet Felted Vessel

I made my first wet felted vessel a few days ago, using a 3D resist I'd made from bubblewrap. Just in case anyone else wanted to get covered in wet wool tops and make as much mess as I did, I made a Photo set on flickr

Today I thought I'd try to make a bowl shaped vessel, I know I've got a rubber football bladder somewhere, but couldn't find it, so I filled a plastic bag up with lots of scrunched up plastic bags, then covered it in packing tape for a resist.

I went a bit too far up with the wool tops, so it was a bit of a struggle to get the partly felted vessel off the resist, and it made it a bit loose too

It soon firmed up as I started to finish the felting by rubbing it inside and out on the bubble wrap

And after rinsing in cold and hot water and fulling by rolling it between my hands it was ready to leave to dry. I'm happy with how it turned out, but I thought felting over a 3D resist would be easy and it isn't, it's messy and fiddly and takes forever. I might just have to see if I have better luck with a flat resist.

Hello

Well, I finally got around to starting a Blog.
Hopefully it will help anyone who, like me, is just starting out learning about felt and experimenting with it.
And I can check back anytime I forget how I did something :)

Before I started wet felting, I searched the internet for complete 'How to' instructions, but I couldn't find anything detailed with lots of pictures and easy to understand for a complete novice like me who had no idea at all where to start.
So, using these instructions from Devon Woollies, and adding a few bits of info I'd picked up from my searches ....using bubble wrap and a bamboo blind (okay, it was 4ft bamboo garden fencing, but it was all I had, and I was eager to start!) I tried my first wet felted piece (below).












A couple of members on the felting forum recently said they'd like to try wet felting, and that got me thinking again. So I made a photo set of How to wet felt...right from pulling off the wool top, to rinsing the finished piece.

Here's the set on flickr, and I hope it's useful for anyone who hasn't tried it yet and wants to.