felt – eternal magpie

New shoes in progress…

Did I mention that I was making some new shoes? I suspect that might be one of those things that I only mentioned on Facebook and Instagram, while I was having a bit of a break from the blog. I started working on them back in April, with some lovely wool felt from Cloud Craft.

I’d originally wanted to make my own felt, but my hands and shoulders haven’t been well enough to allow that, so I decided to bite the bullet and buy some. I love the combination of felt and embroidery (I seem to be doing that a lot these days!), and I figured that I could use the techniques from my original fabric shoes to make something a bit more robust.

This turned out to be very nearly the case. These are just lacking their rubber outdoor soles, and they look really good on the lasts – if I do say so myself!

Unfortunately something went a bit peculiar in the sizing department. When I took them off the lasts and put them on my feet, they were enormous! By this time I’d already taken orders for ten prototype pairs, so I could thoroughly test the techniques before letting them loose in my Etsy shop. Obviously I couldn’t make ten pairs of shoes that didn’t fit their recipients, so I decided to bite the bullet and borrow enough money to allow me to order some lasts.

I found the perfect style at Shoe Last Shop, a company which specialises in selling small quantities of lasts to shoemakers without factories, who aren’t mass-producing thousands of pairs. I’ve ordered a full set of these, in European sizes 32 to 45. I suspect that the smallest and largest sizes will get a lot of use (which is why I wanted them), as most commercial shoe ranges only include sizes 36 to 41, sometimes up to a 43 if you’re lucky.

I was expecting to have ten finished pairs of shoes to show you by now, as the lasts were scheduled to arrive just over a month ago! Sadly there have been some production delays at the factory, and I’m going to have to keep people waiting a while longer, which I really don’t like. It’s bad customer service on my part, even though there’s nothing I could have done to fix it. (Well, except for not having taken the shoe orders, even for prototypes, until I had the lasts in my hands.)

Thankfully, I received an email yesterday to say that the production backlog had been caught up, and my lasts should be shipping in the next couple of days. I have a huge pile of felt read and waiting, so as soon as they turn up I can make new upper patterns to fit them, and get a move on with the shoes!

All hats, all the time…

Okay, that’s not strictly true, and I don’t even really know what I’ve been doing with myself over the last fortnight apart from working a lot and feeling a bit ill, but I have just finished a little flurry of hats, so here they are.

The one above is the colour of a perfect cup of builder’s tea, trimmed with gold lace that took weeks and weeks to arrive from China. I won’t be ordering that lace again, but I’m making good use of it while I’ve got it. This one in particular is very pretty, and I have enough left over for at least one more hat.

This one’s more the colour of coffee, or really good dark chocolate. This is also lace-from-China, which I’ve altered slightly from its original form. It had a segmented piece at the top which is designed to have ribbon woven through it, but in this case I preferred it without. The loopy bits are all couched down securely to the crown of the hat, but the teardrop shapes are left loose to allow a bit of movement.

I’m hesitant to describe these two hats as “Steampunk” just because they happen to be brown and gold, but perhaps they’ll be the perfect addition to somebody’s outfit.

I wasn’t at all sure what I was going to do with this lavender coloured felt, and then I spotted this gorgeous organic cotton lace from Lancaster & Cornish. Okay, so it’s a lot more expensive than the Chinese lace (in this particular instance, fifteen times more expensive!!), but now I’ve worked with it I’m in no doubt that it’s absolutely worth it. The quality is amazing, it’s organically produced, and to be honest it’s just plain gorgeous.

The flower embellishment is also organic – a cotton and bamboo blend from the Organic Textile Company. I have quite a lot of little scraps of this fabric left over from a dress, so I can feel a few more of these flowers coming on – perhaps as brooches.

And this… this is what came off my new cloche block from Guy Morse-Brown. Isn’t it just gorgeous? I realise I seem to be singing my own praises here, but really it’s the hat block that does all the hard work, and Owen Morse-Brown (who makes the wooden blocks) has carved an absolute work of art. I’m in love with the asymmetrical shape, the way the crown hugs the head, and the cutaway at the back of the neck which makes it incredibly easy to wear. I’m keeping this one, and I’ll definitely be making more!

The flowers are made from the offcuts of felt that I trimmed away from the brim, and they’re cut out with Sizzix paper punches. It’s quite hard work to hammer the punches through the thick felt – they’re not really designed for that kind of punishment – but the flowers have come out with nice clean edges. The centres are Swarovski crystals. (I’m trying not to think about how much it looks like one of those flowery swimming caps.)

The hats are all on Etsy, should you fancy a closer look.

I’m now at that awkward stage once again where I need somebody to buy a hat (or a bunch of smaller stuff from the Emporium) before I can afford to buy any more felt hoods to make new hats with. It seems unlikely that wool felt hats are going to fly off the shelves in the middle of summer, but at least it’s not as though I have a shortage of other materials to make things from in the meantime. I have some carded wool batts on order to make some felt which will hopefully be heavy-duty enough for slippers or hats, I have lots of organic cotton to turn into tunic tops, and I have plans to make a few things for myself. Summer dresses, perhaps. I certainly won’t be short of things to do!

Surprisingly popular!

This little pile of felted flowers (complete with grainy Instagram filter – I’m “inexplicableemporium”) is waiting to go to work with me on Saturday evening, where I’ll be having a stall at our Museums At Night event. Well, that was the plan, anyway! The two green were ones were made by request for a friend, and the blue one sold on Facebook this afternoon, to another friend who’s also ordered a waterfall jacket that I’m really looking forward to making. Thankfully I still have seven hair flowers to take with me, plus another nine brooches the same size that are just waiting for the pins to be sewn on.

This is the size of the smaller flowers – about 7-10cm (3-4″) across, and quite deep. It’s attached to a bobby pin that has a little round pad at the top, which holds it firmly in place. The pad sits in between the flower petals and the centre ball, so it’s completely hidden and very secure.

This one… well, first I was going to keep it. Then I sewed it onto a comb, and remembered that combs really don’t stay put in my hair. But I was worried that it would be too big, so I popped this photo onto Facebook to ask for some feedback. Apparently it’s not too big at all, a friend has claimed it for her own, and I’m in the process of making half a dozen similarly-sized ones to take to the Vintage Night tomorrow!

And this, again from Instagram, is a selection of the flowers I made yesterday. I’m hoping that there’s enough of a range of colours to appeal to lots of people, although from the response I’ve been getting to the photos, I’m hoping that their popularity isn’t going to be a problem!

Oh gosh, that sounds smug, and it really isn’t supposed to. In fact, I’m a little bit overwhelmed about how supportive and enthusiastic people are being. I’ve seen links to my Etsy store shared on forums, received offers of collaborations, and everyone’s just generally being lovely. I think I’m gradually starting to whittle down my making into things that I’m really happy with – so the fact that other people are happy with them too is the icing on the cake!

Latest Hat Update…

I haven’t shown you a picture of a hat for a while, so I need to rectify that straight away!

This gorgeous blue one is already sold. I showed a picture of it on Facebook, and a friend popped up and yelled “MINE!!” almost immediately! I still need to work out the best way of adding a custom order listing to Etsy, so that people can choose the colours and flowers that they like.

This one’s also sold – a lovely dark grey (anthracite) hat with guipure lace trim and a velvet button. The brief for this one was “sophisticated”, so I hope I’ve managed to achieve that. This was also the first hat which necessitated making a slightly different size from my blocks, so I hope it fits!

This one is for sale, it’s listed over on Etsy. The lace trim is one that came to me in a bundle with all of the vintage haberdashery, and it’s embellished with some little flower-shaped beads. I’m on the lookout for more lace motifs like this (not necessarily in ivory), as I’m really pleased with the way it’s turned out.

And one more, again listed on Etsy. Fuchsia pink this time, which is turning out to be my best selling colour so far! This one has a wider lace trim, gathered underneath another velvet button.

I had a conversation at the market on Sunday which worried me a little bit – it seems that people might not entirely understand that I’m actually making these hats, rather than just buying them in from somewhere and then trimming them. I suppose I should take that as a compliment, as it means they don’t look “hand made”. But then it also means that customers might not understand the inherent value in the time I’ve taken to choose the colours, choose the block styles, work the felt, and then add every single stitch by hand rather than machine. Believe me, doing all of the sewing by hand takes hours for even the simplest of these styles.

That’s not a complaint, of course – it was a conscious decision I took right at the beginning, to do everything by hand. It just means I need to make sure that people are aware of all that work, and that the hats are reaching the eyes of people who actually value it. How I achieve that is another matter, but I’m sure I’ll figure it out.

Felted Flower Experiments

Whilst the feedback on all of my hats so far has been very positive (thank you!!), there’s one enquiry that’s come up several times now: “will we be able to buy the felt flowers without a hat?” The answer, of course, is yes! But I do need to work out the best way of doing that – both for me in terms of making the flowers, and for you in terms of offering lots of choice.

So, to that end, I’ve been doing lots of felt flower experiments. The two pictures above are of my attempts to cut out petals from a wet-felted sheet, and then sew them together again to make a flower. This did not go well. It turns out that if I’m making felt, I’d actually prefer to wet felt the flower itself, in one go.

So that’s what I did next! It turns out I have a bit of a problem with size though… these are all smaller than the monster flower that I made for Nicola’s orange hat, but the smallest one is still almost the size of my hand. They just seem to naturally want to come out big!

This is fine by me, as I think a huge great flower on a brooch or a clip or a hair comb would make a fantastic statement! But of course not everybody wants to show off as much as I do, so I thought I’d better try and make some smaller ones as well.

So, here’s a little needle-felted flower, attached to a large bobby pin. Much better! It fits in the palm of my hand, and the flower is light enough that it’s not going to pull the clip out of place.

This is the second one, playing with adding a bit more colour to go with the felted ball in the centre. I have a few of those that I made during a session with the children at work, so now I’m choosing colours and designing flowers to go around them. This one’s already sneaking up in size though, so I need to make sure that these stay dainty and don’t get too big! I also need to practice my needle felting technique, as I’m not quite convinced about the texture of this one. Maybe a finer needle would do the trick.

So, watch this space, as I suspect there will be lots more flowers to come!

More flower than hat…

So, this is what happens when you order a hat in BRIGHT ORANGE, and then give me free reign to decorate it however I like. I blame Nicola, for agreeing that a massive “alien flower” would be a good thing to wander around wearing on her head.

I have to say that I have absolutely LOVED making this. The opportunity to use a nice bright base colour, and the freedom to make something that I thought Nicola would like, has been really enjoyable. As has the process of making the felt itself. I’m learning something new every time I work with wool in this way, and I’m so excited about the possibilities. It’s good for me too – it keeps away my perfectionist streak, as there’s no such thing as “perfect felt”, and it changes all the time as you’re working with it.

The centre of the flower is circled with bright orange bullion knots, to draw the colour back into the hat. The process of stitching through handmade felt is incredibly satisfying – almost therapeutic, somehow.

I had to take a bit of a break from felting today, as my shoulders and neck were complaining about all the rubbing and rolling, but I can’t wait to get back to it. My next day not-at-work is Tuesday, and that’s most definitely going to be another felting day!

At long last – another new hat!

It wasn’t until I came to upload this hat to the Etsy shop that I realised it’s a whole month since I added the previous one. How on earth did that happen?

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about the hats (too much thinking and not enough doing, clearly!), and I think in April (when I formally register Eternal Magpie as a business again) I’m going to move these hats out of the Inexplicable Emporium and over to an Eternal Magpie branded Etsy store. I think that will allow me to have a bit more creativity without having to shoehorn them into the faux-Victorian theme… and if I make anything properly crazy or very obviously Steampunk-inspired, then it can go into the Emporium if that’s where it fits best.

I’ve been having a bit of a play with felt again, with a view to the hats having a lot more handmade embellishments, rather than only ribbons and buttons. I think that lends them a certain uniqueness – anyone can go to a shop and choose a pretty ribbon and a striking button, but only I can make these exact flowers. Sure, there are a million and one felted flower tutorials out there, so I can’t claim any uniqueness in that. But these flowers will have come out of my hands and my imagination, and that will hopefully make these hats stand out a little from the many other cloches out there. Typing “felt cloche hat” into Etsy currently returns 1,869 results, so I need to make mind stand out somehow! They’re currently on pages 1, 2, 3, 5, 6 and 7 (out of 47) of that search, so not bad, but anything I can do to make them that little bit more interesting will definitely help.

I also want to make a few smaller things, such as hair clips, to offset the fact that yes, these hats are going to be expensive when the prices go up in April, and yes, they’re going to be outside of many people’s budgets. I’m hoping that people might start by buying a hair clip with some pretty felted flowers on it, and like it so much that they save up to buy a hat. Well, a woman can dream!

Another fuchsia pink hat!

This is the latest hat (almost) off the blocks – another fuchsia pink cloche with black guipure lace trim. I was asked to amend the shape of the back, so that it wouldn’t catch on the back of Helen’s coat collar.

As you can see, the cutaway flattened out a little bit once I’d added the brim wire, but I think it’s still a nice shape. Hopefully it will be shaped enough to accommodate Helen’s coat!

All I need now is a really nice button to finish it off, and to cover the join in the lace. (Where the pins are, although I was careful to make the join as discreet as possible.)

I’m looking forward to having a little more time on my hands when next month comes around, all this hand sewing is very slow. I lost the best part of a week to being ill, and I’m on a course with work this week, which is more sewing time gone, and I’ve got a backlog of hats waiting to be trimmed!

Don’t forget that all of the felt hats in the Etsy store will be going up in price at the end of the month, when the introductory offer comes to an end! I’ll try and get a few more finished before the deadline, so you’ve got plenty to choose from.

Experimental Afternoon

I had one of those “brilliant ideas” just as I was falling asleep last night, so I rushed home after work this afternoon to try it out. It turned out not to be as brilliant as I’d thought, which is often the case! I’d been contemplating the possibility of felting loose wool fibres onto the pre-made felt hoods that I’ve been using to make the hats. I hadn’t seen that method of working in books or online anywhere, so I thought I’d give it a go.

I tried needle felting first, with a piece of leftover wool yarn. Coarse needles worked, with a little effort, but left unsightly holes in the front of the work. Fine needles resulted almost immediately in a break – the needle just wasn’t strong enough for the dense machine-made felt.

Next I gave wet felting a go. Admittedly I’ve used a very small amount of wool here, but again it just didn’t really work. The fibres are starting to felt to themselves, but they’re not even thinking about meshing in with the darker felt underneath. I guess it’s finished too smoothly for the top layer to grab on to.

The yarn and the merino fibres also started to hold on to one another very nicely, but you can see that they’re just not even slightly attached to the bottom layer.

It’s possible that with a lot more fibre and a lot more effort, this technique might work. But to be honest, if I’m going to have to go to a lot of effort, I’d much rather be making my own felt completely from scratch. That was always the plan anyway, I just wanted to see whether there was an interim method between machine-made hood and handmade felt. Apparently not!

This is how the experimental salt dough looks now that it’s dry. I haven’t baked it – I left it at work while I was off sick for three days, and it’s dried itself out nicely in the meantime! It’s lovely and white, but the salt does make it look a little grainy. The backs of the pieces are rather rough, and I’m not completely convinced it will survive being sanded. I also want to test a few pieces to see how brittle they are. There’s no point making a pendant or a pair of earrings that are going to snap the first time you bump them – or that might dissolve the minute they get damp! So I need to experiment with painting and sealing them too. Oh, and drilling holes in them. I should really have poked holes with a cocktail stick while the dough was still wet, but I’m hoping they won’t snap under the pressure of a hand drill. Another fun experiment to try!

Two more hats…

Today’s been a pleasantly busy one – a good old rummage through my haberdashery boxes this morning, followed by two more completed hats!

I particularly like the understated style of this smart dark grey one. I don’t think it would look out of place on a film noir femme fatale, topping off a great big coat with a fluffy collar, and a slinky dress worn with beaded shoes.

Equally, I think it would look fabulous with jeans and a jumper – effortless weekend style in that “I look awesome in my jeans and fancy hat” kind of way.

This one’s a different sort of a creature – very eye-catching, and in all my favourite colours at once! It’s designed to be worn tall – with space between the crown of the hat and the top of your head. But if you want to, you can pull it right down and hide inside it, with the back of the brim flipped up for a different look.

I have three blocked hats still left to work on – a pale grey, pale pink, and the same bright fuchsia as the band of the hat above. I have some lovely black guipure lace that looks very striking against the fuchsia, I just need to buy another piece that’s actually long enough to go all the way around the hat! I’m not sure yet about the pale grey and pale pink. I have half a mind to embroider flowers all the way around the pink one and top them off with lovely buttons, but I don’t want it to come out “whimsical” in a bad way!

Anyhow, the two hats above are now in the Etsy shop, along with made-to-order versions of each style. I’m off to let my poor old fingers recover from all of this hand sewing. I might make a few more hoods on my next day off, to give the machine a bit more of the hard work!

Tag: felt

New shoes in progress…

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All hats, all the time…

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Surprisingly popular!

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Latest Hat Update…

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Felted Flower Experiments

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More flower than hat…

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At long last – another new hat!

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Another fuchsia pink hat!

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Experimental Afternoon

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Two more hats…

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