A Foot Stool Cover.....maybe

On and off, for the past 6 months, I've been working on this project. 

 I have finally finished all the 

free motion stitching

and it done!

Sometimes I would sit staring at thread colors, pondering which one

to use where, do I want contrast or no...

But what fun!  

It was usually an ache in my back that let me know I was stitching for an hour or 

more with out taking the much

needed time to stretch or correct my posture.  

This is the completed piece on the left.

The whole thing is a 17" inch square that I intend to cover an antique foot stool with.

Maybe.

This photo on the right 

is part of the design

before any stitching was done.

 

Here on the left is that same

part of the design

now stitched with the free motion stitching.

It's such a transformation once

the stitching goes on!

I didn't have a specific pattern I wanted to stitch here, that's part of the fun, it's always kind of a treat to see what develops as 

I stitch.

I just love the pattern that developed on

this lower shot!  It's definitely

my favorite in the whole piece.  I used an all cotton thread on 

this lower part, in the picture above I used a 

polyester thread.  I find myself preferring the all

cotton thread but I haven't been able to

to put into words why...

To make this piece I used black superfine merino for the backing and the designs

were created using partial felts that I made with various 

types of hand dyed wool and wool/silk blends from my stash.

And then the vines and such are Malabrigo yarns,

I always love the way they just melt into the wool and create

great swirly texture!!

Redemption or "The Good..."

The finished result of my second attempt at this bag!  The previous post showed my first attempt....not so pretty.....but I think this turned out wonderful.  I'm still debating if I should put a button on the flap or not.  We'll see.  I was so happy with the results I made a similar one, only larger, for myself.  This one will be put on my Etsy site soon.

Here on the left are two details I added to the bag.  One is a stitched patch I put on over the area where I stitched the cord straps on.  I prefer to stitch the straps on, I feel it's stronger and it hangs better.  When I have felted the cords to the bag I'm never quite happy with the results.....too bulky looking.  The second are some felt bands that I made to go around the cords so they don't separate and tangle.  The bands move freely, there are three total.

This, obviously, is the inside pocket and the loop on the left is to clip your keys to.  I played around with the pocket....while you can't see it, I sprinkled some German glass glitter on the gold roving  for the pocket before I wet it out.  It ended up looking pretty good and sticking!  While I'm not a glitzy gal it was fun.









 Below is a close up of the front flap.  I felted in some of my hand spun "art" yarn alone the center sides.  In the center I did some free motion embroidery of swirls.  Stitching on felt creates such cool texture, you can't really tell, but the areas between the stitching almost puff up.  It always amazes me how dense and sturdy the felt is after stitching it!  

The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

This is one fuzzy bag !

 I suppose I could only write posts where I show my best work and have lovely photos of it, then you might believe I am such an amazing craftswoman.  Well, lets be honest, not every piece I or anyone else makes turns out perfect all the time.  There is a reason some sayings have been around a long time, like "we learn from our mistakes", "practice makes perfect"..... Both apply here so lets go with it.  Here is what happened and what you can do to make it better.

I wanted to try out a new shape for a purse that's been dancing around my head for a bit.  I will use Corriedale wool for the bag, it is a more durable choice for purses and boots or clogs - it felts up strong and sturdy and it doesn't tend to pill up on the surface like Merino can. I am in love with a new color way my dear friend has created: PANSY by Carin Engen Fiber Arts.  Well, I only had one ounce of it.  I had loads in a natural grey. But I really wanted it Pansy......once my mind is set on something.  So I decided I would use the grey on all the inner layers and for the last outer layer I would use the Pansy........I knew that some of the grey would work their way to the surface during the felting and fulling process, thus lightening the colors of the Pansy outer layer.  Ok, it was a test bag.......it would be cool if it turned out to be something I could use or sell in the end...not.  The giant top photo is the back side of the finished bag taken in the sunlight to show ALL the grey fuzzies

that came through the top layer.  The next one down was taken out of the sun, still fuzzy but not as dramatic in the photo but it still looked horrible in real life.

What to do, what to do?!?  I am going to point out here just one of the many benefits of taking felting classes......you learn great little techniques to make your felt look more polished-well finished.  If you can, take a felting class!!

 Well, when we get kind of fuzzy and unruly in the areas we don't want excess hair, what do we do........get out the razor!  Think about it, felt is wool which is essentially hair.  Now this is important!  Go buy a cheep-o single edge razor with NO moisture strip on it.  Double/triple edged razors just increase your risk of gouging your felt, and the moisture strip........that's for your skin.......it just gunks up the felt.  The picture above here on the left shows the flap of the bag, the right side and the center have been shaved, the left has not.  Before shaving you honestly could not distinguish the center horizontal yarns or the yarns creating the center band! 

A small chunk of wool taken off by pressing to hard

         HOW TO SHAVE YOUR FELT

- your felt should have been rinsed clean then rolled in a towel and most of the moisture blotted out.
- put one hand under the area you are going to shave for support or you can lay it on a hard surface, I prefer my hand because I can tell the amount of pressure I'm using.
- use a short, repetitive motion, don't press down hard, a bit lighter than you would press down on your own skin.  start out in an area that's a bit more out of the way, better yet practice on the inside or back of the piece.  Once you're confident and have a feel of the needed pressure begin on the main area.
- go either horizontal or vertical and stick with that direction and do your shaving in blocks.  It is alright to gently go over yarns or silk fibers-fibers, not silk fabric,  as long as they have felted into the wool correctly.  If they aren't fused to the wool well shaving may just pull them off.
- pull the fuzzies off as you go.  You should only need to go over an area once.
-  here on the right is most of the fuzz I got off this bag and the razor I used, just a cheep bic razor with just one blade, no more!
- take your time, don't try to rush it.  The picture above on the right shows an area where I over shaved, spent too much time in an area.  If there had been multiple layers of the Pansy it wouldn't have been so noticeable.  If it's really obvious you could go in and with a thin felting needle and some wool of the same color, fill the hole by gently needle felting it in.  I would then wet around it and with a dab of soap gently wet felt that area so you can't tell it was needle felted.

A few side notes about shaving your felt:
*any piece of felt can be shaved to give it a neater, cleaner look
*all types of pure wool felt will handle a shave, this doesn't include locks
*NOT so with blends of wool and silk or bamboo or tencell or hemp.  If you feel it truly
   needs it, experiment on a practice piece or where it won't be seen or matter it if
   makes a gouge or even a hole.
*silk fabric that has been nuno felted into your work should never be shaved! ! !
   a razor and silk should not come in contact, it's never good-yep-I made that mistake

Below are the before (on top) and after (on bottom) photos.  Honestly, the camera didn't do justice to the dramatic difference.  I made the photos as large as I could so you can see the change, hopefully.  After shaving the richness of the colors came through and the bag had, well-a much smoother surface, much more appealing.
I will end up just using this bag as a practice surface to do free motion embroidery on but it was a good lesson in patience or lack there of!  Next time I hope I will have more patience before I go through all the time and effort it takes to make a good piece of felt.  It ended up being a well felted & fulled bag, I like the shape, inner pocket placement, on my next bag of the same shape I will change the flap design.....so I did learn a few things and hopefully my flop taught you a thing or two.  It is rare that I don't learn something new with each piece I felt, good or bad......and sometimes ugly. 

 __________________________________________________________________________________

I mentioned that I used a hand dyed wool called Pansy in Corriedale created by Carin Engen.  I want to give her a bit of a plug here........her hand dyed wool really is beautiful and very well crafted.  I have been using it for years in my work and always love the results.......unless I mess it up with grey wool that is!
She has a shop site on Etsy called CarinEngenFiberArts where you can purchase her hand dyed wool.  She sells nuno scarf kits and also, she found an artisan to make the most amazing felting tool, it's called a felting stone and it works wonderfully!  I use mine constantly, I even wrote a post about it earlier on.  Carin teaches throughout the country, mostly in California though, and you can check her blog site, listed on her Etsy shop to find out where she is teaching next.

Too Busy To Blog......Doing What?!

Well, this January my husband, Jack, got me a spinning wheel for our 32nd anniversary.   He's such a great guy.....  I've been wanting to try spinning for years, as with felting, for me-there is a great sense of satisfaction  in being able to create a useful item from basic materials, things people have been using for thousands of years.  Keeping old ways alive in the fast paced, instant gratification world we live in today grounds me and makes me happy! 

My first spin.....

...then it got better....

The wheel I ended up getting was a Lendrum Original.  A few of my friends that spin all said this was the best wheel for a beginner and that it would also be a good wheel as I got better.  They were so right!  I'm surprised at how quickly I picked this craft up, it's been such fun spinning all different types & colors of hand dyed rovings and hand carded batts of wool then try to decide which would look good plied together , I just love creating this yarn!!  While I taught myself to spin I have to give a great deal of credit to my friend Lori Lawson.  Lori is one talented lady, she dyes her own wool, spins beautiful yarns, knits equally beautifully, felts, weaves....you get the idea.  She has a great blog :   http://paintspinknit.blogspot.com/

as well as one of my favorite Etsy sites:  

https://www.etsy.com/shop/CapistranoFiberArts?ref=ss_profile

Via emails she gave me invaluable advice, after writing and getting to know each other she invited me to her home while I was in So. Cal this spring for a one on one tutorial.  I had such fun and picked up some great techniques for spinning!

Thanks Lori! 

and better yet!

of course I had to knit something with my yarn...a cowl

 So for a few months I did very little felting and loads of spinning and knitting.  Yeah, you could say I was obsessed. And it was (is) so much fun!

But felting is my first love and things have evened out lately and I am now spending about an equal amount of time spinning and felting.  Well, there is another avenue I have ventured down this past month but that is another blog entry!

 These last few photos on the right are some of my latest yarns.  The one on top I am currently using to knit a shawl, I had two skeins of it.

 The yarn on the bottom was the yarn I learned how to correctly ply on at Lori's.  That was an "ah ha!"  discovery and so key to a good yarn!  I'm currently using it to knit a hat pattern that Lori wrote.  I feel pretty good about these, while I would love to be able to get these thinner, sock weight, I
realize it will come with time
 and practice.  Couldn't tell you
what weight these are, I'm not a 
seasoned enough knitter/ spinner to know that just by looking at it!  Usually the nice label on the skein of yarn tells me that, guess I better get with it and figure it out.

So that and life in general has been keeping me busy enough to have neglected my blog. 
I'll try and do better............

Time For Carin's Felting Retreat

  I know, it's been way too long between posts!  It's been a busy year so far........
I just returned from my good friend Carin Engen's retreat at her workshop and home in Garberville, CA.  Carin is an amazing felter and felt instructor who teaches all over the country as well as has her own line of hand dyed wool for spinning and felting.  For three years now she's had numerous three day retreats in
Garberville where nine felters can go and have the run of her workshop, Carin
is there as a "technical adviser" AND you get three yummy meals a day....yes, it is
a felters nirvana.  It was great to see                                                

friends I made at last years retreat and
make new friends.

  Here are the things I worked on:
The first day was this bag ,the three pictures here on the right and below is a bag I did, I've had this idea in my head for months now... it is fun to see it finally materialize.  I wanted a simple image on both sides of the bag and for
some reason spoons kept popping into my head....and a bowl goes with spoons.
First I made partial felts in the colors I wanted then drew & cut out the images.
After wrapping my bag template with four layers of white merino I added the cut out spoons, bowl & trim.  Next was, yes, much rolling in bubble wrap.  I use the larger, heavier blue bubble wrap when I'm doing something large and rather heavy, it handles the bulk better.  It's actually pool cover insulation, fyi.
Fulling was done by rolling it on itself
while keeping it wet and soapy, working the desired shape all the time.
In the next few days I'll find the right thread and do machine free motion embroidery around the spoons, bowl and maybe the edge. 

I'm especially excited with how the bowl turned out...

I'm very happy with the way it turned out, now I need to decide what I want to do for
straps.....I'm thinking purple leather, but can I find the right shade of purple!  I would
do one thing different though.....instead of four layers of white merino for the base of

 the bag I would do six.  I lay out quite thin and just feel the sides could be denser. 
 Next time.  Always something to learn with this craft.

 This I did on the second day, it's a red triangle scarf.  The three pictures below are it.

This one on the left is the first layer of my lay out.  The variation of the colors was so beautiful I just had to take a photo!  You can barely see the shiny plastic resist running along the edge, this made a type of overlapped edge, the bottom layer is plain burgundy and the top is the multi-colored reds and golds.
What you can't see is a triangle of cotton cheese cloth under the whole thing, it makes a great texture on the fabric, it can be seen on the turned over top edge.
The "design" along the edge and in the middle of the scarf was made with silk hankies that were dyed by Carin, the wool also was dyed by Carin, one of my favorite colorways, Drama.  You can buy her hand dyed wool on Etsy at Carin Engen Fiber Arts.  If she doesn't have it stocked, write/convo her and she'll tell you when it will be available.  

Finished Scarf

And finally day three.....this is a shawl I made from a beautiful light green vintage silk sari.  This shawl actually took me the longest to make, from 9am to 8pm, a real "all dayer".  The photo on the left was taken after the second go around at rolling; usually I do 150 rolls each time, switching ends after 150...I do this four times, usually.  This silk was a bit more stubborn and needed lots of extra rolls, how many?  I lost count.
Anyway, the main body of the shawl has a long piece of silk on either side, wool on the outside edges that was felted to make a slight ruffle and then two layers of silk on the ends.  As much as I dislike having my picture taken I ended up doing so, you can really see the length and, I feel, beauty of the shawl.  I really happy with how this came out.....I can promise you it won't end up on my Etsy site!  This will stay with my stash :)

great crinkle effect!

What a productive three days I had, such a blast.  Thanks again Carin!

An Autumn Table Runner

 I'm so excited to have finished this table runner, I just love how it turned out!  I have been working on this for the past week and put close to 25 hours into it.  The pictures above and

here on the left are the finished piece.  The entire piece was wet felted and then I went in and stitched in the details using free motion embroidery. 











 First I made sheets of partial felt using an assortment of fall colors and cut out the leaves, berries and pomegranates.  I had never used commercial pre-felts before and decided they would make a good base for my runner.  On top of those I laid out four layers of merino wool and then laid out my design, below.  For the black edge I made my own black partial felt and folded it over the edge of the wool to get a nice straight edge.  I then wet the whole thing down and with the netting still over the design I worked by hand where I had put down my partial felt cut outs to ensure they would stay in place when I was rolling it out in the bubble wrap.  I rolled the piece from every edge until it was well felted, no fiber movement. 

The picture here on the right is the fulling part.  This is where the shrinkage comes from.  I roll the work on itself and work it from every edge as well.  I'm constantly pulling and tugging at the edges to keep them straight other wise they would be all wavy.  It's important to keep your work nice an wet during this stage. 



 
This is what the piece looked like when I was done fulling it.  It looked pretty good but I wanted some of the details to really pop and have more detail so I did free motion embroidery on it when it was dry.  I learned this technique in a class I took from Lisa Klakulak and it has changed the way I now felt.  It's amazing the texture & definition you get with this stitching!





Here is an example how stitching adds depth and texture to a leaf.  This first picture is a leaf after the piece has been completed and dry.  The shade of the leaf and the background color kind of blend together and it doesn't really stand out.

This is the leaf after outlining it.  Already it begins to pop away from the background and the edges gain definition.  One thing about the free motion embroidery is that is rather unforgiving on felt.  Once your stitches are down they stay there, ripping out rips up the felt and makes it fuzzy.  Take it slow and practice lots!  Spend time choosing a thread color too, a slightly darker shade stands out more.

  Here is the finished leaf with all the veins stitched in.  We have some trees who's leaves are turning such a bright yellow now, I think they are a kind of sycamore.  I patterned the veins on my leaves by closely studying the veins on it's leaf first.  Because the leaf is three layers of wool placed on a base of four layers of wool, when you stitch on it, it makes these great hills and valleys of texture on the leaf. 

I just know another piece similar to this is in my immediate future, maybe a wall hanging.  I haven't decided if I'm going to put this up for sale on my Etsy shop.  I'm not sure I want to part with it and I don't think I could sell it for a price that makes all the work I put into it worth it for me.  I might just try and see what the reaction is.......  We'll see.  

Thanks for checking out my blog site.  Hope you enjoyed this piece!

Terry

Felt Knitting Project Vessels

 I've made these for myself for awhile now to hold my knitting projects in.  I always have a few projects going at once and it's a great way to keep my projects separate and neat.  No balls of yarn on the floor or mixed up in a bigger basket.  When I want to take a project with me I just put it in my purse and everything stays in it's place, and it's made of my favorite textile, felt!  I brought a project that was stored in one of these to a yarn shop because I was stuck, one of the gals in the shop asked me if I sell them on my Etsy site.....I said no, but what a great idea!  There are tons of project bags for knitting on Etsy but none are made of felt, so I thought I would add these to my shop.  The two bags above are the ones I just made for my shop.  We'll see if the Etsy knitters approve!

The photo here on the left and below is the larger black bag in the making.  I used Malabrigo's Rasta yarn for the stripes on the outside.  I LOVE that stuff, it just melts so easily into the felt.   I've used it on merino, merino, silk 50/50 blends and on corriedale.  I buy it online from a great yarn shop in San Francisco called Imagiknit, they always seem to have it in stock. 

First I laid down four layers of the dark pink part of the way down the template, wrapped it in plastic and then did four layers of the black.  The template was 14" tall and 13" wide, the finished piece was 8 1/2" tall and 7" across; that's a good amount of shrinkage.  

I use this size for larger knitting projects, in the top picture there are two skeins of yarn and the back of a sweater inside.                               

This photo on the left is the small bag that I usually use for sock projects.  It's hard to tell here because it's wet but the outside layer is dark purple merino, the top layer is chartreuse merino and around it is some beautiful homespun art yarn.  I used an old washing soap bottle to help form the bottom of this one.  It was made the same as the big one. To stabilize these while they are drying I put the bottle in the small one and stuffed the big one with bubble wrap.  This helps the vessel keep it's shape during drying and once dry it will keep that form.  The small vessel in the top picture has a 440 yard ball of yarn inside and a partially completed sock.

  

Both of these have inner pockets to hold your knitting needles and there is another pocket in the larger one to hold a measuring tape, scissors, or whatever you need.  They were so fun to make I think I'll do a few more!  I love coming up with new ways to mix colors & decorate them.  I want to do some machine free motion stitching on them too but those will probably be for me, it's so time consuming I don't think I could get a reasonable price for them.  You can find them on my Etsy shop called ifeltlikeitbyterry.

Thanks for stopping by!    Terry