Wednesday 9 June 2010

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

8 comments:

  1. Yay! It only took about 16 edits to align the text to the left, the photos to the centre and have the right amount of spacing. AND, it seems like the pictures are clickable now too.

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  2. The results are wonderful!

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  3. Zed - I'm glad you got the blogging difficulties worked out. Your coaster/placemat sets are wonderful. I like the natural set best.

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  4. There Gorgeous Zed, You do great work :)

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  5. Thanks Kaz :)

    Thanks, Ruth. The trick was to upload all photos first-in reverse order. Then add them after each part of text. Then click and align the photos to centre-as if they are text, then align text to left.

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  6. Zed, I need help. I've been trying to learn to felt for some months, and all my things end up "hairy". As in, none of my felt looks like fabric. I don't know what I'm doing wrong, except maybe that I'm using llama and alpaca along with wool. Your coasters are amazing! How do you get them to not be furry???

    (you can email stairgj@slu.edu)

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  7. Hi :)
    sorry for the late reply, I missed your comment.
    I don't know about llama, but felting with alpaca will definitely make your felt more hairy. If you use baby alpaca and what they call 'firsts' (I'm no expert but this always seems softest to me) then your felt will be a lot less hairy.

    When I make the coasters, I felt/full them firmer than my usual felt, and ironing the felt can help shrink it a little tighter and make it smoother :)
    (Iron the back if you use other fibres/fabrics with the felt)
    I hope that helps :)

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