Placemats, coasters and trivets

A few months ago, I made a placemat and coaster set from a thick piece of felt that hadn't worked out as I'd wanted it to

I was really pleased with the results, so when I was looking through all my natural coloured wools and wondering what I could make a big piece of felt for, I decided on placemats and coasters, and made two sets:

                                          
A few weeks ago, I had my 2nd attemp at using prefelt...the first being the piece that didn't work out which then became a placemat and coasters :)
Learning from the mistakes I'd made last time, I carefully laid out the pattern onto merino tops, then when the felt was made and dried, made a placemat and coaster set for my girlfriend:

                                      

I wanted to make a non slip mat, a kind of trivet for small pans, using the liquid rubber or silicone that people use on the soles of felt slippers. I couldn't find it, so thought I'd try this non slip rubber mat instead

      

It works really well. I had planned to machine stitch it on to make sure it's secure, but it wouldn't go through the machine :) It feels secure with blanket stitch, though.

I have a photo tutorial on flickr for how to do blanket stitch if anyone is interested

Clickable Photos

For some reason, my photos won't go to a large version when they are clicked on anymore. I've looked all through the Dashboard and settings and can't find what's gone wrong or what I can do to change this. I always use 'medium' for the picture size, so tried 'large' for my last post, but that made no difference. It seems to lose half the point of having a blog if the pictures can't be seen in detail. If anyone can help me, I'd be really grateful, thanks.
All the photos on my blog are on my flickr photostream and can be seen large and in detail on there.

Other felting fibres

I've been trying out some of my 'other' felting fibres recently, making reference samples of how they look when used a few different ways on top of merino wool tops.

For this one, I used Soya bean staple fibre, a very short and crimpy fibre. The first row is a blend of merino and carded soya bean fibre. The second row is fluffed up soya fibre layed on the top of the merino, and the third row is some of the crimpy bits, separated and layed on top of the merino.

I used black viscose top for this sample. The first row is a blend of viscose and merino, the second row is fluffed up viscose layed on top of the merino and the third row is fine wispy viscose tops layed on top of the merino.

This sample tries out carded silk carrier rods. The top row is a blend of the carrier rod 'fluff' and merino, and the bottom row is fluffy wispy bits layed out on top of the merino base.

All the different fibres added interesting texture and shininess to the felt, and the viscose made the felt feel very strong without being too stiff.

New flickr group

There's a new flickr group called Fabric and Fibre Tips and Tutorials.

Hopefully this will be a great place to find info on a variety of things, from how to wash fleeces, dyeing wool and fibres, how to sew button holes and blanket stitch, to tutorials on how to make felted hats and slippers, making fabric bookmarks and postcards or which fabrics work well for machine felting or nuno felting etc.

Come and join and add your photos or post a discussion topic linking to your tips and tutorials on your blog or website.

I added my tutorial on How to make a wet felted vessel using a 3d resist

Spinning with a Drop Spindle

I'm working on a project at the moment with the intention of using up spare bits of yarn I've made, but I ended up having to spin up some more. I don't have any particular colour theme or look in mind, so just made some random multicoloured.

I'm not an expert by any stretch of the imagination, and mainly just spin up what yarn I need, but I often see flickr comments from people who'd love to give it a go, so I thought I would do a picture tutorial for how to use a drop spindle for spinning simple yarn if anyone is interested. You don't need any fancy equipment, you don't even need to buy a spindle, a simple one can be made using a cd or plastic cd spacer.

Some other Felting Photo Tutorials I've made:

How to make Textured Felt

Wet Felting from start to finish

Making a Wet Felted vessel using a 3D resist

Making a Wet Felted case using a flat resist

More Vessels

Just before Christmas I made a load of vessels in an attempt at making the perfect one for my girlfriend. I was finally happy with this one: in daylight and at night with a tealight showing the locks and curls.



But this left me with a few 'reject' vessels, which were nice shapes, but hadn't turned out how I wanted. I tried needlefelting a few extra locks on one of them, then ran it through the washer with a normal load and it turned out well. So, that got me thinking about how I could transform some of the others. This next one turned out to have all but a couple of little curls all felted in, so I needlefelted on some crimped or curly wools and locks that I dyed....Angora, Wensleydale and Bluefaced Leicester. Some dyed Falkland, Icelandic, Devon and English 56s were added for texture and to secure:

I did this next one the same way as the blue one, but used raw Wensleydale, Alpaca and Angora, and washed Wensleydale, Kid Mohair, Bluefaced Leicester and a variety of white wool tops (incl. Texel, Devon, Cheviot) Then I put it in the washing machine.

Here it is before washing
http://www.flickr.com/photos/zedster01/4204169048/

New things

Vessels

I recently tried using a bladder from the inside of a ball as a resist for making vessels. I took photos of all the stages to add to my flickr set of Making a Wet Felted Vessel with a 3D Resist. Here are a couple of vessels I made using the bladder.

Silk Carrier Rods

Not so long ago, I bought some silk carrier rods from World of Wool, I'd looked at them when I went to their shop, but they were such ugly, stiff, papery things that I couldn't see how I'd use them. Ruth from the Felting Forum convinced me to give them a go, and since they're only £2.50 for 100g (large bag) , I thought it was worth a try.

If I wasn't impressed by the way they looked, I was less impressed with their smell :)

Luckily after soaking in lukewarm water the smell went, and they were easy to split into layers:

There were some scruffly, straggly bits that came off, but I saved these bits up and when they were dry, I pulled them apart and carded them.

A couple of weeks ago, I dyed the silk rods that I'd separated:

I used a few pieces on projects, but wanted to see how they looked individually, to get a better idea of how usefull they'll be. So I ironed a few pieces to flatten them, then layed them on some black merino.

I was pleasantly surprised by the results, I never expected them to turn out quite so shiny, they really look metallic, like crinkled coloured foil, and were very hard to photograph because of that. I have a few more before felting and close up photos on flickr

Sorry about random gaps between text and photos, or no gaps between text and photos, the stupid site has a mind of its own.

Everybody's doing it!

I think I can safely say that the Textured Felt technique is a big hit! I really liked how my second piece turned out, using mainly blue and green fibres:

This is a close up of the texture:

Unfortunately, the link I posted to fibrefrolic's blog which details the technique isn't working, but I made a photo set on flickr describing how I made the blue piece.

Lots of people have given it a go with loads of great results, Judelicious created a nice bright piece with merino and silk, and this piece made by feltfinland has great colours and textures.

To see more fantastic textured felt pieces, have a look at the post about it on the felting forum, my favourite so far is the turquoise piece that Tess made.

If anyone else has tried it, it'd be great to see your results :)