Tag: felting

Surprisingly popular!

A little bouquet of felted flowers. Wet felt for the petals, needle felted in the centre to hold them onto the bobby pins at the back.

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.

Small felt hair flower on a bobby pin

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.

Large felt hair flower on a ribbon-covered comb

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!

Yesterday's felt flowers, now dry and ready for brooch pins. More enormous flowers for hair combs on their way!

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!

At long last – another new hat!

Pale grey cloche hat with blue beaded felt flower

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.

Felted leaves and tendrils

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!

 

Experimental Afternoon

Failed felting experiment

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.

Failed felting experiment

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.

Failed felting experiment

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!

Salt dough experiment

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!

Experimental Hat’s first outing

Felted hat

Turns out it’s quite difficult to take a photo of yourself in a hat – my arms aren’t long enough!

I took the hat for a test-drive this morning, after I’d spent a while blasting the brim with a hairdryer to make sure it was properly dry. It took ages to get all the pins out, and it was half way through the day, when I was showing the hat to a friend, that I inevitably found the one that I’d left in. Thankfully I discovered it before I stabbed myself in the head!

Felted hat

I do need to stab the hat slightly though. Now that I’ve worn it a bit, the brim has succumbed to gravity and the corners have started to stick out in a way that reminds me of the leaves of a cabbage! It’s also got a slightly thin patch on the top, which is covered by one of the long parts of the brim, so I think a bit of needle felting will help to overcome both of those issues.

So far I have been described as looking like a flower fairy and a “woodland creature” in the hat, so as far as I’m concerned, that makes it a complete success!

Experimental hat

Felted Hat

I’ve spent all week thinking “I must get around to doing a bit of felting”, so today I got out some fluff and some soap, and got on with it. This is three layers of merino tops – dark brown on the bottom, a light tan in the middle, and a sort of a foxy-coloured orangey layer on the top.

Felted Hat

I’m always surprised by how quickly the felt actually comes together when you make the layers nice and thin. Perhaps because my initial experience with felt was making it with kids, who tend to whack a ton of fluff down any old way, no matter how carefully you explain “thin layers” to them! There again, I’m always surprised at how long the fulling part takes. As soon as my felt’s holding together I want to call it finished, and I’m always a bit disgruntled when it isn’t.

Felted Hat

Once the felt was made, and fulled a bit, I decided to get out my hat block from Wingham Wool Work, and try to make a hat. If I’d known at the beginning that I was going to make a hat, I’d have made the piece of felt round instead of square! I did a lot of the stretching and shrinking by hand and with my trusty wooden soap dish, all the while thinking “I wish I had a palm washboard” alternated with “I wish I’d just bought a felt hood“. Eventually I resorted to the ironing board, and discovered that steaming the living daylights out of the felt with the iron worked really well!

(Although I also discovered that I hadn’t actually washed all the soap out of the felt, so my Shed now smells of hot, soapy sheep. Could be worse, I suppose.)

Felted Hat

And here’s what I’ve got to show for an afternoon’s work – a funny, felty, foxy sort of a hat.

I thought about cutting away the excess, or trying to neaten it up into some kind of tidy brim, but I really like the raw “unfinished” edges of the felt, and the way you can see all three layers of colour this way. I’m hoping that once the hat is dry, the pleats and folds will stay in place, but I suspect that I’ll actually have to stitch them. Which is fine, because I can take the opportunity to embellish the hat a little bit more as I’m working on it.

The last thing I’ll need to do is add an elasticated band inside the hat. That way it should mould to my head nicely (the polystyrene form’s a little bit too big for me), and it should be less likely to pull out of shape as I wear it.

Now I just need to convince myself that I don’t need a lovely wooden cloche block. The polystyrene one’s fine. Really.

Antique Shop Bargain!

Ridged rolling pin "for oats", perfect for felting!

Today we popped into Fanny’s Antiques (in a side road near TGI Friday’s, Reading), and picked up a couple of lovely things.

The first lovely thing I can’t show you, and I have to forget about immediately, because it’s going to be my Christmas present. Suffice it to say that it’s a small piece of furniture, and sewing is involved. I’ll show you in December, once I’ve remembered to be surprised by it!

The second lovely thing is the rolling pin pictured above. Labelled as being “for oats”, it’s going to be absolutely perfect for working with felt! Half the price of buying one from Wingham Wool Work, too.

It turns out I’ve also saved myself the grand sum of £9.50 by not buying a fulling block – I discovered that a grooved wooden soap dish does the same job! One felting gadget that I do want to buy though is a bulb spray. That will allow me to use water that’s hotter than my hands are able to tolerate through the plastic bottle I’m using at the moment. It should also hopefully be a bit more controlled.

Once we’ve moved house, there’s a convenient-looking work surface next to the sink in the new kitchen, so I’m hoping I can get the felting stuff out while the sewing machines and fabric are still packed away. I’m looking forward to seeing what I can do with my new rolling pin!

Felted slippers – part two

Too big!

Awww. They’re too big! I knew the lasts would be quite roomy around the top, and I do plan to cut these away to more of a ballet pump shape. But still. Too big.

Too big!

Look how much room there is in front of my toes! The lasts were a size 38/39, but I’d say these have come out around a 40/41. I did toy with the idea of chucking them in the washing machine, to take the hard work out of shrinking them a little bit more, but was so worried about them coming out the right size to fit my two year old niece that I decided against. (Not that I begrudge her a pair of pink felted slippers, but I want these to be mine!)

Soles and insoles

So, I went back to my long-neglected shoemaking supplies, and have given them rubber soles along with cork-and-fleece insoles. These are now sitting on the deck waiting to dry, while I’m recovering from the fumes from the glue. Wow, that stuff is disgusting. Even wearing a respirator and eye protection, you can still smell it a bit, and it still makes my eyes water. That, along with the terrifying health and safety warnings, makes me think that there must be a better solution than glue. I mean, what’s the point of painstakingly hand crafting a pair of slippers from natural materials… and then whacking four layers of highly toxic rubber cement all over them?

They do need some kind of sole though. On laminate flooring and tiles they’re slippery enough to be absolutely lethal, and of course without soles they can’t be worn outside. Time to go back to my shoemaking books (and maybe a few museums with non-leather shoes?) to come up with some more ideas.

Lots and lots of tea bags...

Meanwhile… this is the scene in my kitchen at the moment. Remember I said I was going to take all my frozen tea bags out of the freezer, to make room for ice cubes? Well, I did that, and I left them all out on a table in the garden to dry overnight. Except that, for the first time in weeks and weeks, it rained. It rained A LOT. So now they’re on the kitchen table, drying off again.

I have no idea whether they’ll have any dyeing properties left whatsoever, after the amount of water that landed on them last night! Hopefully they’ll still leave at least a little trace. I’m still not entirely sure what I’m going to dye with them yet, but after a few experiments with the leftovers in the tea urn filled with assam, I’m thinking it needs to be silk for the best results. Which is the one thing, of course, that I don’t have a great deal of in my fabric stash! I might need to make a bit of extra room by sewing up some of the cottons first…

Pink Felted Slippers

Felted Slipper Tutorial

Today I spent about three and a half hours transforming this…

Felted Slipper Tutorial

…into these!

I have to say that, although they’re not quite finished yet, and there are definitely things I’d do differently next time, I’m really pleased with my first attempt at resist felting!

I’m currently impatiently waiting for them to dry. I was hoping it would take less than 24 hours in this heat, but the humidity’s so high at the moment I think they might actually be getting wetter the longer I leave them out in the garden.

Whilst they look toasty warm, I think these will turn out to be summer slippers. I only used four layers of merino to make the felt, and really they need to be a lot more sturdy than this if they’re going to last any length of time. I’d also like to be able to glue a rubber sole onto future slippers, and this pair are much too thin for that. Perhaps I’ve really made myself some nice warm socks? (In the middle of a heatwave! Brilliant!)

I spent about an hour this morning searching for a good tutorial, with lots of pictures, explaining how to use the polystyrene lasts without taking the (altogether too risky for me) option of just chucking them in the washing machine. I couldn’t find one, so I’ve written my own. Because this was my first attempt, it will no doubt be edited as I go along and find ways to improve things. In the meantime, you can read it here!

Nuno Felting

Nuno Felting

Hello! I feel as though I’ve been away for ages. I’m so busy at the moment I’ve barely had time to breathe, never mind blog, but I made this yesterday and I thought it would be a nice little something to show. It’s a somewhat experimental piece of nuno felt, about the size of a sheet of A4. As you can see, I’ve felted a little bit of merino onto a backing of muslin.

Nuno Felting

When the wool starts to felt, the fibres contract and matt together. The cotton muslin doesn’t shrink, so you get these lovely textures coming through.

Nuno Felting

This is the back, with its lovely rivers of ruching, and the wool fibres just poking through.

Not bad for a first attempt, I think!

Lithuanian Felted Slippers

Aren’t these felted slippers absolutely magical? If I accidentally found my way through the back of a wardrobe and ended up in a mythical land where it was always winter and never Christmas, these are exactly what I’d want to keep my feet warm while I was there.

They’re hand made in Lithunania by ing00te, who sells them on Etsy.

She also has a blog (which is partially translated into English for those of us who can’t read Lithuanian!), and you can see her beautiful pictures on Flickr.

Some of ing00te’s slippers have cork soles, so that you can wear them outside. I love the detail of the little heel on this pair, the way it echoes the felted swirls on top. Just gorgeous!

Now I have to fight the urge to learn how to make felt slippers, because I need another hobby like a hole in the head. But if you don’t want to fight that urge, you can buy polystyrene lasts and all the wool you’ll need from Wingham Wool Work. There are lots of tutorials online to get you started, but this video from Ray Reynolds seems pretty comprehensive.

I’m just going to look through ing00te’s photostream again. So pretty…