Pencil Roving Mats

I recently got some Pencil Roving when I did a World of Wool order. I liked the look of it, but couldn't decide on which colour, so I decided to get a 500g bag of Pencil Roving waste. I expected more than 4 colours, but it still worked out cheaper. I wanted to see how well it worked layered, so I decided to make a 'woven' mat/coaster type thing. I started off with a 10 x 10 inch template:

Then I cut the pencil roving a bit smaller than the template, 10 strands of each colour:

I laid the strands across the template:

I then held the bottom of the strands down with a ruler and flipped back alternate ones:

I laid the horizontal strands across the columns and then flipped back the other strands:

I used a plastic knife to push the strands in to place.

This is how it looked when it was finished:

I didn't think it looked its best, so I took off a few of the strands at the ends:

I added a couple of layers of Merino tops, then felted it and fulled it quite firmly. It was about 7.5 x 7.5 inches afterwards:

I also made another mat with pencil roving, I used up some of the spare lengths left over from the other mat, and added rows and columns. This one ended up slightly wider as there wasn't as much roving going across as there was top to bottom:

I thought they turned out really well :)



*** If anyone is interested in the 3 week Wet Felting for Beginners Course, there is just over a week left for registration, the last day is Tuesday 16th June, you can find all the info here: http://feltingandfiberstudio.com/classes/wet-felting-for-beginners/

Finishing Projects

I’ve been trying hard with Ruth’s Daily Dose of Fiber challenge, but so far that mostly consists of me rewriting the same list each day :)    I have managed to complete a few projects recently though. The first one was a small shoulder bag I started a while ago when I was using my felt offcuts. I think these kinds of bags are known as ‘passport bags’, it’s big enough to fit a camera and coin purse in. I had some nice fabric that I salvaged from a worn out camera bag, so I used this on the inside flap. It might look familiar because I took photos of the magnetic closures for a post not so long ago.

 

I covered over the tops of the magnetic closures with felt--craft felt on the inside and a nuno felt offcut for the front, before sewing the sides together--that’s usually something I’d forget to do! 

Once it was all sewn up, I finished around the edges with blanket stitch in the same maroon colour I’d used for sewing. Another project I finished recently was a felt placemat. I made the felt sometime last year and used a piece to make a mirror case, and cut out the placemat, but I never got around to blanket stitching the edges, so one day last week when there was about 30 minutes of light, I finished it off.

The last project I managed to complete this week was a set of two coasters for by the kettle. I used a plain piece of felt and cut an 11 x 7 inch rectangle, and a square roughly 6 x 6 inches. I zig-zag stitched around the edges then did random straight stitching, first one way, then the other. This thickened up the felt and because I wasn’t aiming for neatness, I didn’t need to concentrate hard or strain my eyes :)

My next project is to do a wool and fibre inventory. What have you been working on lately? Have you finished any projects you had waiting for a while? Do you have a list of things you want to work on?