Handmade Felt Book Covers

I tried so many times to get photos of the felt I made for these, but it was either too dark and they didn't come out, or they were weirdly orangey. So, I have no good photos until the pieces were made into covers, even Photoshop couldn't help! This is a cover I made for an A6 address book, I used an old gardening notebook I made for my girlfriend as inspiration. This is the front:

And this is the back, with silk carrier rods:

This is a cover for an A6 address book too, I used some stripey tops I got from wollknoll and some rainbow trilobal nylon:

This is a bigger one, a cover for an A5 diary or notebook. It is Merino and lots of different silk pieces. I can't decide which side I like best, so this is side one:

And this is side two:

New Notebook Cover

I thought I'd make myself a cover for a ring binder notebook I've started using for notes about batts, fibre packs and etsy listings. I made a piece of felt a few weeks ago from merino and embellishment fibre blends. I used lots of different fibres: Milk Protein fibre, Hemp, Flax, Ramie, Banana, Bamboo top and fibre; Viscose top and fibre, Trilobal nylon, Acrlic laps, Plastic fibre and Egyptian cotton. This is the whole piece after felting:

I recently made another notebook and made the straps to go through the Delrin clips from felt, and it looked really nice, so I thought I'd do the same for this one. This is the front:

It took hours to sew (at least 9 episodes of Hawaii Five - 0!) because I machine stitched the straps into place on the back, but hand sewed everything else and finished off the edges with blanket stitch.

I left the natural felt edge for the front inside flap.

I cut the back flap to size and used the offcuts for the straps.

Nylon

Nylon is a great versatile fibre for using with felt. It is soft, shiny and can be dyed with acid dyes just like wool or silk. It is also really inexpensive and a small amount goes a long way. I made this first piece using just 3 colours of merino and 3 shades of dyed crimped nylon fibre: red, yellow and blue. I blended them togther to make more shades. It was really fluffy when I layed it out, but felted really nicely and flat, and had a soft, warm feel.

After Felting:

For this second piece I used trilobal nylon. This is sometimes given fancy names like 'Firestar' and a price tag to match, but it's just super-bright, shiny, inexpensive nylon. I used a rainbow blend from World of Wool, but separated the colours and blended them with similar shades of merino. The nylon created a really interesting texture, it gave the felt a kind of open look, even though it was well felted.

Close up of a corner:

I'd love to see what you make with nylon, whether it's felting, spinning, weaving or anything else :)

If you're interested in trying out different fibres, have a look at the Felting and Fiber Studio site, we have a section for other fibres, and have photos of man made and plant based fibres and photos of them used in felting. We also have an 'other fibres' category for all posts related to that.