Felt Flowers

by Catherine Dowling

Hope you are getting into wet felting and finding projects you can make quickly to get you going.

I made these flowers following the instructions on the video below.  If you make the stem a bit longer you can wind it around your wrist as a corsage or you could use it to decorate a simple pony tail. (Note when drying the flower, wind the stem around a cylinder to shape).  Enjoy!

On a roll

At our March end of month meet up we made these fantastic felt rolls. Why are they fantastic I hear you asking, well scroll on down to see...

The first thing you do is lay out your fibres. The colour that you lay down first will be the colour of the outside of your roll. 

Then build up with as many layers of colours as you want. I think about 6 is a good number. Also between each layer of colour I like to put a contrasting darker colour (black for instance) you'll see why this is a good idea later on.

 Wrap your roll around a number of thin timber skewers (the kind that you use for barbeques)

Then roll up tight and use a bamboo matting, seen below to help you start the felting process.

 Pull out the sticks before you've felted it too much otherwise they get stuck inside! 

There is a LOT of elbow grease involved in these! You want your roll be nice and firm. 

When your roll is all felted then its time to get the scissors out

   You can see here just how much it shrinks down in size.

When you start to cut into the rolls you can see where all the good stuff is!  See in the roll below how the contract of dark and light works really well to define the rings of colour.

 Or another option is to lay out really thick layers of fibre at the start (as seen below)

 The end result is really dramatic and can be used to make felt jewellery, brooches, embellishments for jackets and much much more.

Have fun felting. 

If you are interested in learning more about our group or would like to attend one of our monthly sessions just send us an email on 

naasfeltandfibre@gmail.om

-Vanessa 

February felting meet up

This week we had our monthly meet up and we made the cutest little finger puppets you ever did see.

We started by either using very short fibres or as you can see in the picture below cutting up wool!

The first step is to make the animal's tail. We rolled the fibres dry at first.

We then made two small piles for our little mouse's (yes another mouse) ears. For these we used the short, cut fibres.

The ear's taking shape below

Lay out the fibres for your 'body'

 Lay down your pre cut resist

 At this stage you add your ears and tail

 Then cover with your top layer and wet felt

 For an added extra you can add eyes, either by needle felting (as seen below) or stitch on beads.

And there you have it, cute finger puppets!

 How cute do they all looked all lined up in a row.

Well done ladies. Another great session. Looking forward to our next meeting which will be this Tuesday the 26th March. 

Pod Life

Wet felted pods with metallic thread detailing.

Just a sample of Kathrina's beautiful 'Pod' instillation that will be hanging in the Exhibition next week.