Tag: hair clips

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!

Felted Flower Experiments

Cut-and-sew felt flower

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.

Cut-and-sew felt flower

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.

Wet felted flowers

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.

Needle felted hair flower

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.

Needle felted hair flower

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!