My Felting Community

  I just returned from a week of felting with my two dear friends Jodie & Carin.  Twice a year Carin opens up her workshop to Jodie and I; we bounce new ideas off each other, experiment with new techniques and felt our hearts out.  I am so lucky to have such creative & intelligent "felting buddies"!  I know that I have become a better felter because of them, I truly believe having friends that share and understand your creative passion  

is really key if you want to continue to grow artistically.
We are a little felting community!  In fact, Carin held a felting weekend for a group of about 12 women this past summer, sharing her expertise and amazing work space.  Usually Carin travels to teach day long classes in Los Gatos, Lumis and throughout California, she is a highly sought after instructor, but this summer the students came to her.  It was such a success she'll be doing it again next summer.  Having a community of felters is partly why I started this blog, I am hoping to  connect with other felters so we can share experiences and support other like minded, creative souls.


 Here are a few photos of some of the things I made during the week at Carins.


  Above is a scarf I made for me, this won't show up on the Etsy site!  I don't even know what the style is called...  It's an open weave pattern similar to the one I blogged about earlier.  It's made from a super soft blend of 50% merino wool and 50% silk, I am so happy with how it turned out. The pic doesn't do the colors justice, dark burgundys, browns, dark gold-just yummy.  This will be around my neck all winter. 
  To the right is a pair of boots I made out of some natural colored romney wool then I dyed them in a natural dye of Brazil wood to get the dark red.  Now I need to stitch the leather soles on and add some buttons to the side flaps. I also made a pair of gloves from natural merino and white silk and dyed those also in the Brazil wood.  Luckily I made both bigger than need be, I was right to be concerned that they might shrink in the dye pot.  The dye needs to be at a low simmer for an hour and we all know how wool shrinks up in hot water!

  The cowel on the left was the first thing I made and had intentions of dyeing it...but it looked so good as it was with the natural colored merino on the inside and the white merino with white silk on the outside.  If Carin and Jodie hadn't have been there to give their "don't dye it!!" opinion it might be red.  I now need to put a button on it then list it for the Etsy shop.  It should go to someone who lives where it's really cold because I would get much too hot wearing it here in California!  I wish the close up of the nuno silk showed up better because I was able to get
the silk to ruffle up, something I have been trying to do lately.
  The piece to the right ended up being my favorite piece of the week .  Carin showed me how to do it using her hand dyed Romney locks to make a kind of water color effect with the flowers.  I played for hours "painting" flowers and leaves, I was in heaven.  I had intended to make a pillow for my living room out of it but it ended up being a 24" square, much too big.  That's fine, it's hanging in my felting cabin and I made another when I got home that can be a pillow.