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. 

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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.

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

Wet Felting 101

 I've been emailing with a gal who really wants to learn wet felting and was asking me about some of the how's and why's so I told her I would try to do a photo/blog on some of the steps.  This is my first try at this so go easy on me....just email me if I get confusing.  I took pics while I was making a Christmas stocking.
  First start with some merino or corriedale roving, pictured right.  Then make a template from some plastic tarp or I use flooring underlayment, found at a home improvement

store.  Make it 1/3 larger than desired finished size. Place your template on a piece of netting larger than your stocking. You are going to be laying down thin layers of wool, pull gently out of your roving a thin "shingle" of wool and lay them horizontally across your template, being sure to slightly overlap the template; light pic at left. Cover the template then go back over the horizontal layer and lay another layer crosswise. 

 The fibers will be making a cross-hatch, pictured right.... Cover the template the same way with this second layer, again, slightly overlapping.
Now lay another piece of netting gently over the whole stocking lay out and using a scrunched up plastic bag,  apply some room temp. water with just a light amount of liquid soap dissolved in it.  Just press the wet bag onto the netting . You just want to wet the two layers so don't be too over anxious with the water at first.  Once 

it's wet, leave the netting on and using the netting it's laying on carefully flip the whole thing over, right.  Remove to netting.  Fold over the excess wool, right, this will help create a solid piece.  Now you are going to lay two layers of wool, as above, to fill in.  Layer the wool slightly overlapping the red already on the template, wet as directed above.  Now you have one layer completely  wrapping the template.  Now you need to lay the beginning of your second layer.  Lay two layers of wool over the template and have it over lap the edge of the template like you did at first. 

This is the layer you get to decorate.  After you have laid out your wool put down a design.  I used green wool yarn and white swirls of white merino roving to make this design.  Use any color of roving or wool yarns to decorate.  During the felting process they will fuse with the wool, it's very cool.  Be sure not to overlap the edge with your design.  Lay the netting over the whole thing and wet.  Carefully flip this over....


Now you're going to fold the overlap over the edge of the template again and finish adding the rest of your second layer, filling in.  Are you getting how this will all become a solid piece? 
Now you are going to get a sheet of bubble wrap that is at least 24" inches wide and 5-6' feet long and either a pool noodle or pvc pipe(we felters are very inventive) and put your stocking on the flat side of

wrap  and roll the wrap around the noodle so the bubbles are going to roll on top of your stocking (or if you have 10' of wrap like I do you fold it in half and have bubbles on both sides....) Pic left. Roll it all the way up and tie it with 3-4  strips of nylons or t-shirt strips in evenly spaced intervals, below.  Roll it back and forth, pressing lightly at first then getting to a medium pressure, 150 times-back once and forward once is one time! 

Unroll it, flip it over.  If you started it rolling up the sides, now you start rolling it up with the top or bottom.  Alter that way each change. Lightly wet it with the soapy water, roll it and tie it back up and roll 150 times medium firm pressure from now on.  Unroll, flip and alter side or top/bottom, wet, tie and roll 150 times.  Unroll, flip and alter, wet, tie and roll 150 times.  After doing this 4 times, rolling it 600 times, it's time to do the fulling, or shrinking.  What you just did was to compact the layers of fibers, now your going to make the fibers integrate-the ends of the fibers will move closer together- and form a solid piece of fabric, this is fulling. 
First cut a slit along the top and gently remove the template. Place your stocking on a solid surface that you can get wet...  Don't pick at the decorations to see if they stuck!!

Lightly wet the piece, take some bar soap and lightly  put some soap in your hands and pat it on the stocking.  Now start at the top and roll all the way down, jellyroll fashion, and using a light touch roll it back and forth on itself, about to the count of 20, unroll.  Put your hand in to see if it's sticking to itself and pry it apart.(you'll have to do this after each rolling-don't forget to do this!)  Now roll from the bottom, 20 times, unroll and put your hand inside.  You should notice some movement in the fibers, shrinking up just a little.  The decorations will start to grab now too and shrink.  Now re-wet and soap it, then roll from each side, 20 times each.  Then repeat from the top.  You will do this cycle until your stocking has shrunk about 1/3 of it's original size, above. The felt should be firm and solid, pinch the fibers on the surface and if they are loose at all keep fulling it.  See how the yarn and the berries have totally integrated into the wool.  By wrapping and overlapping the wool you have made a solid form.  Isn't it magical!
Now thoroughly rinse your stocking of all soap.  If you like you can soak it in a vinegar bath to neutralize the ph of the soap, about 1TBS per 2 gallons of water, for 15 minutes.  Rinse well.  Squeeze out water and then roll it in a towel to remove excess water. Reshape and dry flat-NEVER in the dryer!
Add a loop and you have a lovely Christmas stocking to hold all kinds of goodies!

Please don't hesitate to email me if you have questions about absolutely anything!
A few after thoughts:
I use a mild liquid dish washing soap to wet out the wool
My favorite bar soap is a pure olive oil soap
Have towels around to control the water, especially when rolling
Hope this helped...