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:

Rachelle Gardner

Rachelle Gardner is a mixed media artist from the US. At the moment she is focusing on fibers and textiles. Some of her recent work is lace felt which she creates by free motion embroidery on water soluble stabiliser and hand dyed wool which is then lightly felted to produce beautiful pieces in rich colours with intricate designs. On her blog she has examples of some of her recent work and also a post showing the process.

Rachelle is also about to embark on an adventurous project transforming her 2-D lace work into large scale 3-D sculpture.

If you'd like to know more about that, visit her Aspen Project website, there's even the opportunity for you to be involved and help with the costs of the project. Everyone who helps out receives a credit and also a reward of beautiful unique artwork, made individually for each person.

Even more sewing!

I've been busy tidying up/clearing out recently, but I've managed to get some sewing done when I've had some sit down with a cup of tea time. The first thing I did was some sewing on a very hairy hand felted alpaca bag. I used some poor quality alpaca tops that I got a few years ago and made a little bag with a flap. You can see pictures of it here. I thought I'd use it to try out some TAST stitches. The first thing I did was add some little shapes to the flap. I made a pattern in Photoshop, stitched an outline, then filled the shapes in with really close blanket/buttonhole stitch.

I've started on the front of the bag, but I've only done a border so far. I used shisha mirrors bought from ebay in the centre of my shapes and a few people were interested in them. While I was searching for pictures of the mirrors, I came across this great tutorial from Emily at joyfulabode.com about how to sew your own shisha mirrors. I gave it a go and was surprised at how well it worked out. I'm not sure I do it exactly the same as her on the back stitch, but it works and looks good! :)

I added chain stitch around the edge:

I've already started working on using different things to attach with the same technique.

The latest thing I finished was my chain stitch piece from last week's TAST. I'm running really low on my natural yarn now, so I'll have to get the spindle out and make more! It'd be nice to have a supply of bought natural wool threads, so if you know anywhere that sells them...something around the thickness of cotton perle 5...I'd be grateful to know :)

More Stitching

I've been learning some new stitches with Take a Stitch Tuesday. I found it quite hard at first, but then I bought some aida fabric with holes which helped me learn the stitches neatly (there's a lot of counting in sewing!). I wanted to try actually using the stitches though, so made some felt to practise, but then I worried about messing up and ruining it :) So I hunted through my scrap box (I never throw any felt away) and found some offcuts from when I made a set of placemats and coasters. I had some handspun thread that I also made at the same time, but spun some more just in case.
I then edged some offcuts with blanket stitch and practised my new sewing skills :)

                                                                      Buttonhole:

                                                                       Fly Stitch:

                                                                   Cretan Stitch:

Feather Stitch:

Herringbone:

Chevron Stitch:

I love using natural wools, and I'm really enjoying learning new stitches :)
I do have one problem though, I only have 1 good needle. I bought some embroidery needles, but they're not sharp and I need sharp to poke through thick wool, if anyone has any advice, I'd be really grateful :)