Mixed Media Piece with Felt, Fibre and Fabric

Late last year, I did a post talking about sorting out my felt scraps (actually, I think it was mostly moaning about bureaucracy) and putting them in 'categories' depending on size. I recently went through them again looking for pieces big enough to make bookmarks, and started to wonder what to do with the really small pieces. They are the piles at the bottom of this photo. Some of the pieces on the left are about 2 inches long and a quarter of an inch wide–really small. I wondered how it'd look if I just pushed them close together on top of a piece of fabric and sewed them into place. So, I tried. I kept to similar colours and added some pieces of fabric because I liked how the nuno felt pieces looked. I also added some art yarns for a bit more texture. This is it when I'd finished two thirds of it:

This is a a bit closer:

I originally planned to do the bottom part in lighter blues, but I had some gorgeous green shades, and thought this would look better.

Looking at it from a different angle:

The texture is really nice:

And of course, a Supermacro close up :)

Catch Up 2

I feel terrible for neglecting this blog so much lately. It seems like the past couple of months have been filled with endless phone calls to people in government agencies trying to get on a scheme to become self employed. It's like trying to do a jigsaw when you don't know what the picture is meant to be, it seems that  everyone I speak to knows just a very small part and doesn't really know who else I should speak to, but the bits are starting to fit together, finally! Hopefully all the hard work I've been putting into my fabrics and fibres project will amount to something worthwhile.

I haven't really had time for much felting, but I did get a sewing machine off my mum and have played around on that a few times. I started just by practising straight lines on a spare piece of nuno felt, then attached a few shapes with zig-zag stitch. I then folded the piece and stitched along the sides to make a small bag/pouch.

 

I also did some zig-zag borders on some felt offcuts to make bookmarks. I added a few felt offcuts to some of these too.

Recently I decided I needed to sort out all my felt scraps. I had two huge boxes of them, roughly sorted, but hadn't really kept up with keeping them separated or neat. I tried to organise them into lots of different piles, depending on length and width, and got some old margerine tubs and labelled them to encourage me to keep them neat!

Once they were all sorted, I went through and chose some nice pieces to make myself a collage notebook cover. I cut a piece of craft felt a bit bigger than the size I needed, then added strips and pieces of felt offcuts to it and zig-zag stitched them in place. I really like the way it came out :)

 What do you do with all your felt or fabric offcuts?