Some days you just get more help than is needed or wanted!
I only left the room for a minute and this is what I found on my return. It can’t have been comfortable, he was sat on the felting needle. I was just having a play before tomorrows workshop.
I’ve also unpicked the alpaca seat pad and had another go – much more satisfactory.
A few needlefelted brooch pieces from scrap felt. Well, I had to do something to keep my poorly teenager occupied.
Ages ago I thought of adding a hints and tips page but have never gotten around to it. My proposal is that you ask your questions and I’ll use the answers to build a page of useful FAQs or hints and tips. It could be questions about fibres or about techniques or perhaps what went wrong. So, who wants to start the ball rolling?
Ages ago I thought of adding a hints and tips page but have never gotten around to it. My proposal is that you ask your questions and I’ll use the answers to build a page of useful FAQs or hints and tips. It could be questions about fibres or about techniques or perhaps what went wrong. So, who wants to start the ball rolling?
Staying with the stash busting theme I decided that I needed more seat pads. Why carry one around when you have sufficient fleece to make more. The Alpaca fleece was gifted to me a little while ago and has sat quietly by waiting for a project to spring to mind. Again, I didn’t pre wash the fleece just dived straight in.
I considered combining the two colours but decided to work them singly and then stitch afterwards for decoration.
The original intention was to complete the spiral in small rounds right to the edge then I changed my mind and moved it out quickly. Too quickly, I’ll have to unpick this, I’ve gone too wide too fast.
This is my favourite, I’m really pleased with how the black has turned out. Do I need more seat pads? NO, but for some inexplicable reason I’m fighting the urge to make more, wish me luck.
I’ve sold quite a few brooches recently so I needed to make more and couldn’t wait to use the new Manx, black Jacob and grey Shetland fibres from Adelaide Walker. They don’t look very inspiring laid out and they’re usually a little different to expected when finished.
Top is black Jacob with some BFLxJacob fleese with lovely caramel coloured tips. The second black Jacob has throwsters silk waste added (not finished this brooch yet) and the Manx has Wensleydale fleece decoration.
To the black Jacob and BFL I’ve added toffee coloured beads. The Manx brooch has cream beads with bronze flashes on them and the grey Shetland has hand spun yarn (yes, it was spun by me!!!) and pearl beads in the centre. Of course, I couldn’t work only in naturals, the turquoise is hand dyed BFL with silver threads, hand dyed yarn and crab fibre decoration.
All four of these are BFL with yarn, silk and bead decorations. Yesterday it seemed quite bright so I managed to snap these few photos for you. As you can see, it wasn’t really bright enough but the worst was the wind, you wouldn’t believe how many times it blew the brooches off the bench. When I can get better photos I’ll load them up to my flickr account for anyone who is interested.
Sue T has requested I publish my recipe for gingerbread but before I begin I wanted to share with you this picture of Sue’s bag. It looks great now it has the toggle attached and is fully functioning. Well done Sue and thanks for the photo.
Gingerbread Recipe
350g plain flour
1tsp ginger
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
100g butter
175g dark muscovado sugar
1 egg
4 tbsp golden syrup
Mix it any way you like, I’ve tried several ways e.g. melting butter, melting butter and sugar and no matter what I do the result is fairly consistent. If you do melt butter and sugar or syrup it tends to make the mixture a bit too warm and sticky so you need to wait for it to cool down. I’ve also made it by rubbing the butter in. So don’t worry, just do what you normally do.
Although the recipe calls for only 1tsp ginger we like the ginger quite strong so I use 1.5 tsp ginger. It makes 18 large hearts and bakes in our fan oven at 180° for 10-12 minutes.
Had you forgotten about the garment? It’s a large-ish project and |I have been doing some more work on it. So here are a few photos of progress.
I’ve laid out in Blue Faced Leicester fibres and here you can see I’ve put some net along the edge and some hand dyed Teeswater curls. This will be followed by another two layers of BFL.
The red fibre is the top 2 layers of BFL and as you can see I’ve now also added some black lace. Someone must be able to guess what this is now.
I don’t know about you but this is definitely the longest felt rope I’ve ever made. It’s 7’9″ or 229cm long excluding the curls on the ends. As I’ve said before, this is a large client so everything is larger. Can you guess?
Many of you will remember the Portland fleece that I was lucky enough to be given in the Autumn. In a fit of, let’s play with raw fleece, I decided to make a seat pad.
When I say raw, I really do mean it. Not washed, all the dirt and other organic matter still in it. I began by chucking laying out Portland to my selected size allowing 30% extra for shrinkage. In the centre was four layers of a commercially prepared Cheviot top and then a final layer of carefully (believe that you’ll believe anything!) placed Portland fleece.
There’s a substantial amount of lanolin on the raw Portland fleece which I knew would throw the soapy water off. So, going straight to the offensive I trebled my usual amount of soap. I much prefer to put soap in the water as it gets the wool wet quickly and I knew the Cheviot sandwich filling would take and hold this very soapy water well. However, I knew that wouldn’t be enough so added more soap directly onto the fleece by rubbing it with an olive oil soap bar.
I left the edges a little drier so that I wouldn’t have too much water cascading to the floor. the plan worked, I didn’t spill a drop of the dirty water on the floor and it meant that the edges didn’t felt in so well and have given me a lovely contrast in texture. The seat pad is very warm to sit on but I think I may try it ten layers next time or indeed make a true cushion which I stuff with washed fleece. Surely that will help with stash busting efforts?
If you received some of the Portland fleece from me I’d be very interested to know what you’ve done with it and did it work? I would dearly like to let the breeder have some feedback.
Not drastically late. On saturday I began a bag as I find it the best way to help people learn is to demonstrate, but in a workshop situation I don’t have time to finish it off. I finished it on Sunday (very quick for me) , it was dry on Tuesday ready for me to show. Until that is, I took a good look at it and discovered that not all the soap was out. So another wash and dry later, here it is.
My apologies that these aren’t great photos but the sky is dark with sleet so it took me 4 attempts and over exposing it to get this far.
It’s a black Blue Faced Leicester base with some throwsters silk waste decoration. The flap is covered with Teeswater fleece which I put on it’s raw state and let it do what it wanted, I wanted some loose curls but not the whole lot.
The handle and closure is felted in.Instead of a button I decided to make a catch from wooden beads salvaged from a broken necklace. Contrasting textures make me very happy.
I’m going to finish today with a picture of brotherly love.
It must be love as they’re sharing one of the best seats in the house. Not only can they watch the bird table from there but it’s right above a nice warm radiator. Midi (short for Midnight, the darker cat) and Pan are our two youngest cats.
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