Category Archives: textured felt

Felting Exhibiton

Last Sunday saw the second International Feltmakers Association (Region 5) exhibition in Sonning Common. It was a good day with lots of chat, very nice cakes and some felting demonstrations from yours truly. The visitor numbers were rather low due to incorrect dates being advertised in various papers and magazines. I’m not at all happy about the poor organisation but I won’t keep harping on about that, I still managed to have fun and met some really lovely people.

The exhibition as you walk in
My display area
The view from the far end of the hall

I also had an interesting experience with some wool I was demonstrating with. I was making pods and used a coarse red wool (afraid I don’t know the breed) on the inside and variegated purple merino on the outside. The coarse wool almost refused to the felt. Even when the merino was firmly felted there were still unfelted tufts of the coarse wool but it did give a very interesting texture that several people likened to a brain.

I also made a couple of more conventional pods and think I might have even inspired one of our feltmaking group to have a go at making pods too ๐Ÿ™‚

A Productive Week

Not sure what happened to me this week but it’s like someone put amphetamines in my coffee. Last week I could barely motivate myself to cook for myself and only managed to produce one piece of felt. This week I have turned into a felting whirling dervish… Here are a few of the things I have started / finished so far this week:

I dyed the lacy scarf I made on Sunday but after looking at it for a couple of days decided I wasn’t that happy with it so put it back in the dye bath.

Much better!
It now makes me think of autumnal leaves falling into a river.

Some felt cuffs using a similar technique to the scarf, there is an adult and 2 child sizes, I think you can just see where I have cut some slits in the adult one, I hope the cuts will open up to make a lacy effect with a little felting persuasion.

A little felt pod made using an adaptation of the lacy felt technique to create the loops you can see in the second picture.

A felt vase made from some shibori dyed prefelt, this is still very much a WIP but I hope the top will look like a 5-petal flower when it’s finished.

A Halloween-inspired bag, still quite a long way to go on this one but I think you can make out that it will be a pumpkin… one day!

I started this “coral” piece before I went on my hols but it takes so long to needle-felt each strip into place that I only just got as far as wet felting it this week. It is currently drying and waiting to be fixed to some stretcher bars.

These 2 pieces were started at Dagmar Binder’s class in September. The pale blue piece was an uninspiring, flat multi-layered disc that I have been looking at for weeks trying to decide what to do with it. I finally picked it up and started playing with it this week, folding it this way and that and this shape was born. An hour of stitching later and it is now drying in it’s new form. Given that I was ready to throw it on the reject / recycling pile a few days ago I’m rather pleased with how it turned out.

The dark blue piece below is a sewer’s bowl, the raised ring around the outside is a perfect pin cushion, while the bowl will prevent your reels of thread, beads etc. from rolling away. It was inspired by photos of a coral polyps:

A nuno felt scarf (would you believe, dyed the silk, felted and finished this week, including a rolled hem).

I also felted this cotton scrim and embroidered bowl, even after using CMC to stiffen it I wasn’t that happy that it would keep its shape so opted to felt it.

And finally another piece from Fiona Duthie’s surface design class. I think this might be come a book cover…

As if all this wasn’t enough I have also scoured and dyed a Shetland fleece, all the beautiful colours are busy drying over my bathtub. More on those in another post.

I think I have earned myself a glass of wine ๐Ÿ™‚ Hope you are having lots of fun in your felting adventures too ๐Ÿ™‚

Linking up to nina-marieoff the wall Friday