Felting and Stitching

Apart from a couple of pieces for notebooks, and the little flowers, I haven't made much felt lately. I did stitch some felt notebook covers but it's been so foggy and dark only one of the photos came out :(  It was a cover I made from the stripey piece I showed last time though, and although both sides looked great, especially once it was trimmed to size, I went for the stripey side:

I remembered another piece I've been adding stitching to slowly over the past year or so. I don't know if you remember when I tried some prefelt sent to me by Heidi Feathers? Well, the silk I'd used on one of the pieces didn't attach in a couple of places, so I added some stitching, then a bit more, and a bit more, etc! This is it now:

This is a fairly recent piece, from within the last few months anyway. I wanted it to look 'scribbley', like layers of drawing and scribbles:

And I know I said I'd show you some of the wet felting class nuno flowers when they were made up, but none of them have been yet, but Jo did bring in one of the dry ones she worked on, so this is it layered up while she hunted for a button for the middle:

Trying Out Commercial Prefelt

A couple of weeks ago, Zoe from Heidi Feathers kindly sent me some prefelt samples to try out. I don't have a massive amount of experience with prefelt, I've made my own a few times for specific projects, and have tried a couple of thicknesses of plain white Merino prefelt as a base for a few things. We've talked about commercial prefelt on the forum a few times, wondering things like whether it keeps its shape well, is it thick enough to use for surface design, etc. I had no idea so I was looking forward to trying it out.
For the first piece I made, I used a couple of layers of Merino tops, then did a very basic 'weave' using strips of prefelt, silk  and cotton gauze:

I didn't do anything to the prefelt pieces, just laid them out. As you can see, the silk didn't attach to the prefelt in a couple of places because it is quite firm and there aren't any visible loose fibres.

In my opinion this is definitely a good thing, I'd much prefer a prefelt to be firm with definition, and for using with fabrics which might not attach easily, you can rough up the prefelt where you need it, using an old toothbrush or wire dog brush. For the next piece I tried out, I used the same 'mirror' idea from the Felting and Fiber Studio Challenge and repeated patterns either side of an imaginary line across the centre of the piece. I started with two layers of Merino for this too, then just cut a variety of oblongs, triangles and squares in matching pairs and added them to the top in a random reflective design.

I really liked the way this turned out. It gave me confidence that a more complicated pattern would work well, keep the defined edges and shapes without distorting.

The last piece I tried was just a little test using some scrap pieces. Left to right: Some geometric shapes; a piece that I rolled between wet hands; a piece I dampened slightly and coiled; a piece I twisted with some Merino top; a piece I twisted on its own; some very thin off cuts I laid out or twisted and another prefelt/Merino top twist.

I took this on an angle so you can see  there is some thickness to the shapes while still firmly attached.

Thanks a lot to Heidi Feathers for the prefelt! Heidi Feathers are today's Meet The Supplier guests on The Felting and Fiber Studio, and have a generous giveaway of a Complete Wet Felting Kit!

To enter, just leave a comment on the post there, then check back on the 5th June to see if you've won. Recipients of the prize must be in the UK because it is such a big prize and postage costs will be very high, but you can enter from anywhere in the world :)

Textured Felt

I stumbled across an entry recently on fibrefrolics' blog, about a really easy technique for making textured felt, using only sewing and the washing machine. I love textured felt and experimenting, and any technique that eliminates rubbing and rolling sounds good to me, so I had to give it a go :)

I only had a white wash planned, so I layed out a piece with all white fibres. I used layers of natural merino tops, English 56's and combed lambswool. Extra fibres on the top were Bamboo top and washed Bluefaced Leicester, all from World of Wool. The top layer was Polwarth and there was also some Angora locks added to the top, both from Karen's Felt Works. I also added some Alpaca and Kid Mohair.

This is what it looked like after sewing, before I put it in the washing machine:

And, this is what it looked like when it was almost dry:

There are a few more photos on my flickr photostream including photos of it just after washing and a close up.

If anyone's ever wondered whether commercial pre-felt is worth buying, I also have some photos on flickr of a few practice samples of that-a couple of different thicknesses and how it works for nuno felting.