Q~ What did I get upto last week...?

A~ Lots of felting!

I had a week with no work interuptions - so I felted my days away very happily.  Im not going to bombard you with photos of everything in this one post.. I'm planning to trickle them out over the next few days :)

My first projects of the week were critters!  I felted a 2nd moongazing hare doorstopper... she was made on Monday.  The lady who first suggested penguins to me, after seeing my penguin doorstop post she requested a mommy penguin doorstop and cuddly baby penguin - as a gift for her daughter. And so, the penguin family grew.. 

I actually remembered to take a couple of photos as I went along this time!  So heres a bit about how I made them :)

Covering the penguin shaped resist with merino fibre

I put a layer of dark charcoal merino down for the first layer of the body, then a nice soft grey for the next 2 layers.. the way the charcoal mottles through the grey looks like baby is starting to get his adult feathers..

Thin plastic stops the flipper felting right into the body

I fulled the felt till it wouldn't go anymore, after rinsing & pushing/pulling it into shape the penguin dries on top of a radiator. 

Once dry he was stuffed.  I sewed a sort of teardrop shaped pouch from this lovely blue wave-like cotton, with wadding in the middle.  Some rice on the inner-body side for weight, then handstitched in place.. et voila - complète!

I now have a whole family of penguins :)  Mom, dad & baby...



Mom, dad are both doorstops & baby is a cuddly with a beany bum for stability

The baby is so soft and snuggly; he is well felted from merino.  You cant see too well in the photo but he has that nice pebbly texture.

Momma is felted from the same fibres as daddy penguin & has the same feathery texture from the Norwegian fibres coming through the merino.

Next post.. new bag design & a great new book!

xx

Addition to my menagerie :)

Just a quick post.. wanted to unveil my latest critter:

I havent got a name yet.....

My penguin doorstop :)  He is about the same height as the moongazing hare - just his beek makes him taller.

I dyed grey Norwegian wool black - it actually went dark charcoal grey, not black.  I used this for the base layers of all the black areas, with white Norwegian for the white bits.  The top layer is merino.  The dark grey Norwegian has come through the jet black merino & given it a lovely texture.. I'm really happy with that.

As with the hare he is seamless, made over a penguin shaped resist.. there was about 40% shrinkage during felting.  His flippers were formed over flipper shaped resists with dry fibre sticking out at the body end and I worked the ends into the body, in between layers as I was laying him out.  With plastic in between during felting to prevent them felting into the body.

He has a 500g rice bag in his bottom and some pretty blue wave like design cotton to finish him off.

This was my favourite project of the week.  Other than that the only felting was a scarf I played around with.. Its a collage of felt and lace fabrics & chiffon.  Havent take any photos as yet though (the penguin took over & stole the show).  Apart from that there has been work, shopping & getting work done on my car to eat the week away. 

xx

Moon gazing hare doorstop...

The days are racing by.. this is going to have to be a quick little post - I just realised its been a while and wanted to catchup a little.

I finished my moongazing hare.. and I adore him - he shall be staying home too :)  He's very simple - just how I pictured him.   Completely seamless, he was formed with both ears in place and is made up from Norwegian base layers and a merino top layer, with lots of BFL and a few black Leicester locks for surface texture.

Stands 14" tall, 500g of dried beans in his bottom for weight

Pretty vintage cotton fabric gifted to me by Clare a few months ago



Why can't a doorstop and teacosy live on the front window sill?

Pictured with the lovely daffs from Sue :)

Brother sheep is all finished.  As I finished him off with ears and hair he decided that he should be called Baaaartholomew :)  I used oodles of curly locks on Baaartholomew, so he is quite a bit more textural than my 1st lambcosy.

My next 3D creature might suprise you... if he turns out anyway lol.  Im just designing and dyeing fibre at the moment.

TTFN xx

WOOLGATHERERS

This morning I had the absolute pleasure of the first Woolgathering! 

Brenda & Susie came along, Clare had planned to come - but having given birth to her first child just 5 days ago, she couldnt make it. We were thinking of you though my dear & wishing you well - I cant wait to come cuddle your little princess. 

We had a really lovely morning!  There was a good deal of tea drinking, book browsing and fibre fondling - as you might expect from a group of fibre addicts.  I thought that it would be nice for us 'founding members' to each have a Sheepish pin..(pictured in the last post)   so the girls got to choose a little lambie to take home with them.. my flock is getting smaller again :)

Susie has issued a challenge over the next month.  She gave each of us a gorgeous tiny metal picture frame... which we are going to fill and bring along to the next meeting.  Quite exciting this... 

Whole new territory for me working on something so small! 

Now the sun is shining - and there is Spring in my heart.  This week has been satisfyingly productive, both in relation to felt made and... 

 A friend safely delivered a health babe.....

Our first Woolgathering went really well ... I have just spent a whole morning chatting with 2 friends over felt & fibre - sidestepping occasionally into such realms as music, yoga & strange phobias :)  It has done me good.

Hope you have an excellent weekend - whatever you have planned

xx

Lambing season...

is here.  I have no sheep... but this week I have found myself determinedly making myself a flock!  It all started out with this little chappy - whom I fell head over heals in love with while making him :)

My new teacosy
I used merino & Norwegian wool, with lots of locks; BFL, Leicester & black Lincoln

He makes me smile every time I look at him - he needs a name I think :)

He's just GOT to stay at home with me!  So I decided to make him a brother to go in the shop... And then while working on these, with their natural colours & the textures of the locks, my bronze moongazing hare caught my eye. mmmmm  my brain started figuring out just how to recreate it in felt.  The fingers started itching.. and a felted moongazing hare was born that afternoon :) She is mostly white - bathed in moonlight, I`ve felted in BFL locks so the white is textured.. and a couple of black Lincoln locks too. She isnt finished yet.. but will (I think) become a doorstop.  I really like her.. think the hares may multiply too :) as they are supposed too in March!

As you can see, brother sheep still needs his eyes & ears

I have also made 5 Feelin'Sheepish brooches / lapel-pins. 

I used 3.5" hat pins for these.  The little black sheep was made from the black lambs fleece from last Septembers charity event.. I washed half of it this week ready to use, and it is sooooo soft.  The black pin is mine, as I felt quite fondly toward that little lamb - would love to of brought her home with me!

More about what Ive done with some of the others soon

xx

March..

"In like a lion and out like a lamb" as the old adage goes.  Thought I'd share this with you, this sunny spring morning :)

From:

Flowers from Shakespears Garden - a posy from the plays

pictured by Walter Crane

An adorable book of illustrations by Walter Crane, a friend of William Morris and member of the Arts & Crafts Movement.

xx

A week in photos...

So, the children go back to school on Monday... and what have we done?  Not a lot is the honest answer.  My son came down with a heavy cold last Monday, which he very generously passed on to me.  Quite effectively scuppering all of our plans for the week; didnt want to visit and make anybody ill, and didnt have the energy for the outings or projects we were going to do.  At least we had the leisure to do nothing without feeling guilty about it though!

We did get a nice sunny day (just the one!) and I got my daughter to model the Faerie Shawl... it is a little large on her, but I`m sure she is dreaming of proms & faerie balls - fancy dresses & frilly wraps :)



I started to sort out my craft room into new storage boxes to give me more room (I hope).  While sorting I came across 2 lots of fibre that I had dyed about 3 years ago... and done nothing with.  There was a carrier bag with just under 200g dyed merino in that had become so compressed it was almost felted.. pretty much unusable as it was.  So I teased it apart & run it through the drum carder :) adding in sprinkles of sari silk fibre... ended up with 2 decent batts - what a fantastic machine!



Which, over the next couple of days I spun into 2 nice skeins

Rachael has, so far, managed to avoid catching the lurgy (she had it a couple of weeks ago).  So of course she needed entertaining.  The other dyed fleece I discovered came in useful here.  It was dyed using Tinctoria Natural Dyes; madder & I think calendula.  Rach helped me put it through the drum carder (which she LOVES) and we carded a batt of brown Shetland cross that I have cleaned  & waiting to be spun.  We split the batts into long thin sections and Rachael has woven a panel on the peg loom

Its more or less 18" square.  The plan was to turn it into a chushion cover... I hope that it works, I think it should.  Just need to find a suitable fabric for the cushion back.

And thats our week...  Im off to find a cup of tea and some quiet (Matthew is now better & has put his music on..only quietly bless him, but its echoing in my head)

xx

An invitation to all felt & fibre friends

I am putting the wheels in motion to start a tea/coffee morning for any fibre loving folks - spinners/felters/weavers and those who are interested in fibre arts & crafts. 

I dont have a group name or permenant venue as yet.  I propose either every other Friday, or 1 Friday a month to meet up for an hour or 2, the idea is to bring along something to work on while we chat over tea & biscuits.

This will be in Halesowen, West Midlands, UK.  Possibly the first meet up could be as soon as Friday 4th March (am)   If you are interested please leave me a comment, or email me through one of my shops or flickr (links to the right).

Ultimately, if there are enough people interested we could use a room at Haden Hill House.. but as I would need to hire the room we would need at least 7 people for this (with approx £1 sub)

This is a chance to get out and meet people who share a love of fibre, no concentrating on learning a new skill as you do at a workshop - just relax and make friends. 

Dont be shy

x

Felting Faerie Fashion :)

Got to be quick with this one... time is getting away from me again - Im sure its speeding up!

Wednesday my fibres still hadnt arrived.  But lying in bed on Tuesday night I suddenly felt the need to create a cobweb wrap fit for a faerie.  Possibly because I had been looking at the Glastonbury Faerie Ball on the internet that evening..

So, as soon as the kids were packed off to school I started setting up &  laying out.  I was really in the zone that day - had the incense burning & soft music playing...

 

How much did I wish that I had table room big enough for this?!

I decided on soft pink & white merino, with creamy tussah silk & ice white firestar to add magic sparkles.  Just one fine layer of fibre to keep it light, etherial.  Less fibre of course means more shrinkage so this needed to start out BIG.  As you see, I had to work on the floor & it even outgrew my piece of lino I use to protect the floor from water!  It started out 3 meters x 1 meter.

Simple leaves cut from mawata silk hankies

I cut 19 leaves from silk hanky and scattered them across the surface... just let them drift down and felted them wherever they lay.

The silk leaves really melted into the felt.. they look lovely.  Next time I will dye them a nice soft colour first though I think.

The problem with working on something this huge & also delicate.. on the floor! is my sad deficiency in the art of levitation!  OMG my muscles were aching after this.  Fortunately when it was rolled up I could transfer it to the table for rolling.

Now Im really happy with it - but I havent got a good photo to show you yet!  Im hoping to get my girlie to model it, hopefully on a dry sunnyish day.. (not hoping for much hey?)  OR, I may be sucessfull in my construction of a dressform - you never know.

My new fibres did arrive early yesterday, so with muscles already aching from the day before I set out to felt another wrap!  This one is a nuno wrap, which again has started out pretty big.  It took nearly 5 hours just to lay the fibre.. and after a couple of hours rolling I was just so shatter I decided to stand the roll in a bowl & leave it over night.  Im about to go work on it some more now..

Have a good weekend x

Waiting again...

Well this morning I was all set to work on a new nuno wrap.  Over the weekend I dyed an Indian silk scarf (HUGE one) and some silk hankies ready for this.  I even got so far as pulling my fibres ready to start, only to find a distinct lack of some of the blues I was planning to use!  Luckily I already have them on order from Wingham Wool (just got an email to say they are posted - yay) so I just have to wait now...

I'm hoping to add some nice dyed silk caps & hankies to my Folksy shop soon (of course I've got to actually get round to dyeing them first lol).  I've been really rubbish at listing stuff in my shops since Christmas.. must do better.

Anyway with my days plans scuppered, I decided to work on some finishing touches instead.  Felted a lovely blue/green piece with some of the aforementioned silk hankies & some firestar fibre sprinkled between the merino & silk.  I'm planning some brooches made from this.. if they work like Im picturing they should be nice :)

And a couple of big blousy flowers (the one on the left is pretty massive :)

I cant believe we are heading into another school holiday... already!  It doesnt seem 5 mninutes since the kids went back and they break for half-term on Thursday this week. 

Heres hoping my fibre gets here by Thursday so I can get this wrap out of my system before the kids break up.

xx