Giveaway!

Sorry I haven't written a blog post for a while. I've just finished a  tutorial with everything you need to know to make a piece of flat felt and turn it into a book-cover with a flap closure and delrin clip. It took forever because I started toying with the idea of doing workshops and started working on updating and expanding my Wet Felting tutorial, and I also wanted to do the tutorial for making the book cover, and in the end I decided to combine them.

I thought I'd never finish, but I finally got it uploaded to the hosting site yesterday (hopefully, I did it right!) so I'm giving away a copy on the Felting and Fiber Studio. It's a 59 page PDF and has lots of different sections and loads of photos right through the whole process of planning, making a sample, laying out the wool and fibres, wet felting, cutting out the pieces, and sewing it together. For more details you can read the full blurb on my projects page.

 You don’t need to do anything special to enter, just go over to the Felting and Fibre Studio site and leave a comment on the post there. If you’d like to spread the word through your blog or facebook etc, it would be very much appreciated but it isn’t a requirement. I will randomly draw the winner 6 days from now, on Thursday 27th February 2014, so please check back on the 27th to see if you’ve won, and leave a comment on the announcement post so I can contact you with the download information.

 Also ... together with the tutorial, I am giving away a custom 'Project Pack': enough wool, fabrics and embellishment fibres to make a sample and piece of felt big enough to make a cover for an A5 notebook ( they're about 21 x 15cm or 8 x 6") a delrin clip and embroidery thread. I'll make up the wool batts to your specifications, whichever colour theme you want, which embellishment fibres to blend in, some texturey wools if you like, etc.

I'll even do a pink theme if you like ;)
http://feltingandfiberstudio.com/2014/02/21/giveaway-2/

Recent Things

I made some mixed white wool batts on my drum carder recently. I like to use different wool breeds together because they felt differently to each other so you get interesting results and it's different every time. I made 3 batts altogether and used Lincoln, 23 mic Merino, 18 mic Merino, Norwegian, Texel, Cheviot, Devon, Teeswater and Shetland wool tops.  I also added in some carded mixed lambswool and Falkland fleece for texture, and Border Leicester, Mohair curls, Bluefaced Leicester, Wensleydale, and Alpaca for crimp and curl. I also added some silk for extra shine.

I thought I'd use the batts as the inspiration to put together another wool and fibre pack to sell on etsy, using white/natural as the theme. I added some cotton scrim and some of the 'luxury' embellishment fibres I have: Bamboo staple fibre, Egyptian cotton top, Ingeo, Banana, Ramie, Flax and Milk protein fibre. And also some silk fibres: silk threads and throwster's waste, silk carrier rods (don't they look so ugly before they're soaked and separated?!) and one of my favourites, silk noil. I love the way it felts, but I also love the way it smells and sounds as it's separated and stretched out :)

I went to Abakhan on Wednesday for some supplies (they were out of delrin clips!) and couldn't resist getting some gorgeous georgette fabric in a few designs. This is one of them:

I also couldn't resist the braiding, so got 3 designs:

I hadn't had chance to do much over the last few weeks so I decided to make time on Friday and laid out and felted a nuno felt piece with one of the new fabrics I bought. I knew I should have added some wool around the edges of the fabric, but I laid it out upside down, with the fabric on the bottom and knew I'd mess up if I tried to flip it :)

I picked colours from the fabric to make a muti coloured patchwork back:

It textured really nicely:

New Drum Carder

At least once a year I've contemplated buying myself a drum carder. But after seeing the wool blends Ann from the Felting and Fiber Studio carded a few weeks ago, I seriously considered it, and after looking at a link Judith gave me to ebay, I bought myself a gorgeous handmade Ash drum carder from the Classic Carder company. I wasn't very good on my first few tries, but I soon got the hang of it :)

I thought I should have an 'aim' instead of just going mad and making lots of nice coloured batts, so I decided to  work out roughly how much wool I'd need for one layer if I'm making a piece of felt big enough to make a cover for an A6 notebook. I got my template out, chose a coppery bronze colour theme and then laid out the different coloured wools in different proportions.

I then gathered all the colours up, weighed them and kept notes. I'd usually think to do this after the fifth time of laying out colours, so I'm impressed with myself :)

I added some small amounts of flax and soy top to a couple of the lighter colours, and it's not obvious from the photo, but I added black bamboo to the natural brown merino.

I was impressed with how it looked after just one turn through the carder, but I wanted it more subtle than it had turned out, so I put the wool through again. I really like how it turned out the second time.

I've been thinking for a long time about making up 'experimental' or 'inspiration' fibre packs to sell on etsy. Working out what to put in there to make it worthwhile with our postage prices was difficult, but Marilyn recently suggested selling wool aswell to make it more of a kit. I had a think about how to do it and came up with the idea of including just enough wool to do one layer, a nice blend for the top. I thought this batt would be perfect for the first one as it's the same colours I used for my coppery bronze piece that so many people liked. It gave me an excuse to get out my favourite shades of organza too.

I measured and weighed the organza, picked out some matching cotton gauze, novelty art yarns and silk throwster's waste like I used on my coppery piece, and also made another little batt to make sure there was enough. But now after lots of weighing and measuring, the pack is finished. I did more maths than anyone should do in a year working out roughly how much organza, gauze, yarn and silk is used on a heavily embellished felt piece :)  I just finished writing the description and added it to my etsy shop.

  Let me know what you think of it, is it a good selection of fabrics and fibers?