Fabulous Felt Part 2

Having had a gorgeous time last monday, we were really excited to go back & have another go at felt making. This week we embellished last week's pieces as you can see below:

I embroidered beads onto my flower brooch & a few flower centre beads onto my felt panel & you can just see (it looks like I photographed this in the dark!) I stitched some detail into the clouds & over the sari silk thread.

 Emily has as you can see needle felted detail into her tree so that the trunk has texture & the leafy top really stands out!
The second half of the day was taken up by designing & making our final pieces using all the techniques we'd learned over the two days. This is mine an abstract tropical flower panel which I'm going to embroider one day very soon when I have time (I'm very proud of it!)

 & Emily did her take on a Mad Hatter's Tea Party with tulips coming out of his top hat & a tea cup on a table cloth. It's all felted together & just waiting for some embellishment.

I forsee lots more felting in my future & we both say a huge thanks to our Lovely Paula for being a fab tutor & the Community Learning Patnership for being a great organisation & running such inspired courses!

Having a Fabulously Felting Time!

Yesterday Em & I were lucky enough to be able to go to the first of a two day felting course, Fabulous Felt, run by one of our friends from our Tuesday Stitch & Bitch group. (For anyone who doesn't know what a Stitch & Bitch group is, ours is basically an excuse to chat & eat cake & we occaisionally get some crafting done too!)

Emily's felt panel!

And it was utterly fabulous! Not just because it's such a treat to spend a whole day doing craft just for fun rather than for work (although we do love doing it for work too sometimes it's nice just to 'do' rather than to first think about costings & practicality & whether anyone will ever want to buy it).

Now our Lovely Paula is such a fab teacher that by the end of this first day we had a panel, a felt flower to be made into a brooch next week on day 2, the makings of another felt brooch, some prefelt (loosely felted sheets that can be felted together at a later date) to start our stash off & two sausage shaped felted things that we will, hopefully if we've felted them enough, be able to cut spiral bead slices from!

                                                           Above My felt panel

She also exploded some of our preconceptions about felt: we learned that you can loosely felt a sheet of fibres together, dry it off & then come back to it at a later date & add more to it or cut it up & add it to something else, it is possible to add loads of detail in to your picture before you start to felt it rather than felting a plain panel & adding all the detail in later & my favourite tip of the day it's much faster to felt on your draining board so not only do the fibres fuse together faster but you end up with a shiny draining board. I wonder if there are more crafty techniques that could be used on other housework chores...all suggestions welcome!
 

Prefelt & spiral bead sausages!

So all in all a fab day & we can't wait for part 2 next Monday, who knows what we'll come home with then!

To see more of Paula's amazing artworks & hear about other classes, you can find her blog here: http://frecklesandflowersgirl.blogspot.co.uk/

My felted flower ready to be made into a brooch next week.

Let the marathon begin!

This last week has been challenging...on Monday our washing machine broke & panic ensued as Emily had planned to spend this week dying & printing tshirts & baby vests for our forthcoming festivals. Happily however family & friends came through & let us use their washing machines & this is the result:

 Printed tshirts & baby vests draped over every surface!