Experimenting

I'd been meaning to try and work out some ideas I'd had for a while, when this piece by viltalakim inspired me to start experimenting. Using strips of plastic from supermarket carrier-bags as resists, I made this piece of felt by sandwiching the resists between layers of felt and then cutting the top two layers and peeling back to reveal the felt underneath :

I used other fibres such as silk top, silk noil, soya fibre and bamboo on the layers that would show, to get the look I wanted.
Once I'd tried simple wavy cuts, I wanted to try out a few different ones. On this piece, the cuts are (from top to bottom) vertical cuts; diagonal cuts (the felt 'flaps' were then lifted up); thin slices cut off horizontally and the holes stretched; a wavy cut; a mixture of horizontal and vertical and lastly zigzags.

This burgundy piece was made the same way as the first one, but I used a resist on the back aswell, to create a channel for a dowel or similar for hanging.

It took me a while to get round to it, but a couple of days ago I used what I'd learned to make this felt danglie:

It took about 3 hours to lay out the wool tops, silk and plastic strips, and felt it. Then after a bit of a rest, the cutting and shaping took about another hour. Seemed like I'd never finish, but I'm pleased with the results

Placemats, coasters and trivets

A few months ago, I made a placemat and coaster set from a thick piece of felt that hadn't worked out as I'd wanted it to

I was really pleased with the results, so when I was looking through all my natural coloured wools and wondering what I could make a big piece of felt for, I decided on placemats and coasters, and made two sets:

                                          
A few weeks ago, I had my 2nd attemp at using prefelt...the first being the piece that didn't work out which then became a placemat and coasters :)
Learning from the mistakes I'd made last time, I carefully laid out the pattern onto merino tops, then when the felt was made and dried, made a placemat and coaster set for my girlfriend:

                                      

I wanted to make a non slip mat, a kind of trivet for small pans, using the liquid rubber or silicone that people use on the soles of felt slippers. I couldn't find it, so thought I'd try this non slip rubber mat instead

      

It works really well. I had planned to machine stitch it on to make sure it's secure, but it wouldn't go through the machine :) It feels secure with blanket stitch, though.

I have a photo tutorial on flickr for how to do blanket stitch if anyone is interested