Mother and Daughter Felting Fun :)

As you know my baby turned 14 a couple of weeks ago.  The weekend before Rachaels birthday the boys were busy working at Garys moms house, so we had a girlie weekend... perfect for a biggish felting project.

Rachael designed her slippers.. unfortunately we got the drawing wet so I can't show you.. but this is how the weekend went..

After drawing round her feet & cutting them out we worked out the slipper shape
adding 1" to each side and  1.5" at toe & heel, and cut a template from newspaper

We cut the resists from foam floor underlay.. and drew the inner design onto the template to
make it easier for Rachael to lay out.  They were going to be GOLDFISH

From this point on Rachael worked on the slippers pretty much on her own with just the occasional helping hand to show her how to work it.  I have a lovely big work table.. Rachael worked at one end and I worked at the other.

Rachael put sari silk fibre on the goldfish for scales, outined in red merino.
We put silk chiffon on TOP of the blue areas to stop it disappearing into  the orange layers which followed

Orange for goldfish :)

Now... as we planned to mad flat bottomed, slip on slippers.. We planned to make the cuts and remove the resists and then turn the heel part 'inside out'  the tricky part was getting the tails on the right side!

We used 6 layers of Icelandic wool, the inner 2 layers were a pretty yellow.
Rachael made fins from silk chiffon sari fabric

Unfortunately, momma got muddled and the fish tails ended up on the wrong side - oops.  So to rescue them we cut around the outside of the heels, placed the fish-tails on top and stitched them with merino wool yarn.

Rachael working hard

After working and shaping you cant really tell that we sewed the seam.

Rachael spent about 5 hours straight on both the Saturday and Sunday working on these.. I don't think she could quite believe how much she needed to work them to shrink 'em down enough & shape 'em :)  she kept asking "is it done yet?" answer "no, another 100 rolls" - thank goodness she enjoyed every minute, and she certainly appreciates her felted slippers now she knows how much work they are.

I finished them off for her while she was at school by defining the lips with a few stitches.. sewing button eyes on (just normal buttons stacked so they look nice and boggley) and sewing some dusky orange leather soles on. 

And the good news is.. she is actually wearing them!