Felting

I have been doing an online class with Fiona Duthie a very talented and famous Canadian felt maker. I am not a felt maker but have admired her work when it comes up on Pinterest and thought I would look into felt making a little more.
What I found out was that I hate the huge amount of rolling that you must do to make felt from scratch and quickly decided that it wasn't for me. I decided to combine some of her ideas and merge them with my dry felting techniques that I do starting with pre-felts and my embellisher or needle felting machine.
An embellisher machine looks like a normal sewing machine but it uses no thread, just 5 barbed needles that meshes or felts the fabrics together.

Here are some of the samples that I made.

They are only samples but I think they could be used as coral in my Coral reef series of quilts.

I used my embellisher machine and then wet them and did some hand felting and rolling to finish them off. They took a couple of days to dry. Here they are waiting to dry.

I have written down how I made the samples and put them into a book so I can reproduce them if I want. The other people doing the class did some amazing work, most of them are very talented felt makers and needless to say I didn't post my meagre attempts onto the forum.

I have been without my main sewing machine, the Bernina 820 for 4 months while the technician sorts out its various problems, mind you he hasn't spent much time on it and I have had to ring several times to get him to keep on with it; it's very frustrating. It's been so long that I hardly remember what was wrong with it.

I remember that it wouldn't sew backwards and it kept saying that it had lost steps and the sensor wouldn't recognize the foot I had attached and kept telling me to put on the correct foot.

It is very annoying and I have kept myself occupied with the felting and hand sewing but I am getting really sick of it. The latest news is that he is going to get me a loan machine while my machine is getting sorted out. I hope I get my machine back before Christmas.

Bye for now,
Linda

Fire Block

I am still busy making my Seasons quilt and one of the blocks is about a bush-fire, which is always a scary threat here in Australia in the summer.

I used a red pre-felt base which looks a bit like  wool felt but it has only been very lightly felted, so it is quite light and thin. I added some bits of wool roving to make a little fire scene.

Using the embellisher machine, I needle felted all the wool to make a fabric. An embellisher or needle-felting machine looks just like a sewing machine except you do not use any thread. Mine has 5 barbed needles that felt the wool rovings. When I was finished I was disappointed the resulting fabric looked too harsh and clunky.

It didn't look anything like the background that I hoped. I looked at the reverse side though and that was much better and far more subtle.

That was much more like the look that I was going for.

I placed the felted fabric in the middle of my crazy block and added some silk fabrics around it.

Fire- Crazy base block

I added some trees in stem stitch and then decided to go for an Australian theme and added some Australian animals. Here is the block completed.

Looking at the block now I realise that I could add some branches to the trees. That's one of the things with crazy quilts; you can usually keep adding stitches.

Bye for now,
Linda

Felting with Elizabeth Armstrong

Earlier this year I did in a one day beginner wet felting class with felter extraordinaire Elizabeth Armstrong. It was such an enjoyable day and Elizabeth is a lovely patient teacher. We were surrounded with a riot of colour in the classroom with many of Elizabeth's projects decorating the room.

She suggested that we take photos so we could remember what we did. We were allowed to pick any colour background and I chose green. She gave suggestions and instructed us on what to do.

I wasn't going to make it into anything; it was just a  learning experience for me and I tried to add as much as I could.
It was hard to photograph the piece because it was quite wide, so here it is on an angle.

After making the background and then covering it with all sorts of wool shapes and fabric and threads we had to wet felt our pieces. After adding soapy water, we rolled and rolled and rolled until at last we could open out our felted pieces and then wash all the soap out.

Felting complete

It was amazing to see all those shapes become one piece of fabric. I don't particularly like it but remember I was just trying to see how it all worked.

I bought Elizabeth's book because I knew that I would forget how to do it.

Felt Happy by Elizabeth Armstrong

I also bought some wool supplies from her.

Not long after the class I started to mind my granddaughter during the week and I haven't done any more wet felting.
Recently I felt inspired to dust of my Embellisher machine and try some needle felting which is a dry felting technique. I am trying to do some landscape style felting and so far I am quite happy.

Needle felting a landscape

An Embellisher machine looks like a sewing machine but it uses no thread, it has a group of barbed needles and felts wool fabrics together. It gives a different look to wet felting and it is not as hard on your arms and hands as wet felting is.

I would still like to try wet felting again though. I could become addicted to felting, I love the effects and I would love to do another class with Elizabeth Armstrong.

Bye for now,
Linda