Felting fibers

Yesterday I needed to go into the walk-in closet in the hallway outside my studio to get a few things......only I couldn't get more than 1 foot into the closet.  No time for a complete re-organization but there was time for a mini clean-up. In doing that I found the bag, well that's multiple, bags of roving bits from when I weigh out the rovings for my etsy shop. I often use them for my own felting projects but those are few and far between so I decided to put together some fun colorful grab bags which are now up for sale in my etsy shop in the Specials/Sales section of the shop. These will be great for needlefelters wanting small bits of many colors - also great for nuno/wet felters and really fun for adding to art batts or colorful batts on a drum carder, blending board or hand carders. In the past when I've done this they've sold quickly - we'll see what happens this time - at least I can now walk into the closet and reach anything I need to get at.

Nothing else to show as I'm finishing up on holiday gifts which I can't post here......still have some knitting to finish up, a little wood burning too.

At guild today........

Today at our weaving guild meeting we played with needlefelting flowers. Here's mine, started out with a rose pattern but ended up looking more like a pansy. It's around 3" around. Everyone's flowers were different - very fun.

More dragonflies and felted heart update.......

Here's this morning's scarf.......one more scarf on the warp but not sure when I'll get to it, have other things on the 'to-do' list for a few days.

I've been asked by several about my felted Valentine.  I made this back in 2008 to donate to a fund raiser called Heart 2 Heart to raise money to purchase automated defibrillator devices for the public schools where I live.  You can see my heart in progress here - I don't know who ended up with it, would have been fun to know since several folks I ran into wanted it. There were so many beautiful hearts on display in the bank that month - it must have been a feeding frenzy when the day to sell them came.

Happy Valentine's Day

....needlefelting elbow....

...needlefelting elbow, that's what I think I have now but it's been fun. Below are the finished teacup & planter pincushions....

....and here are the antique jello mold and little pail pincushions in progress....3 are done, the others have the layer of background color on them.....will work on the those as the mood strikes....

excuse the photos, taking them with my phone, it does a decent job, but.....

Today's play.....

Today's playing was working on needlefelted pincushions - starting at the left is step one of putting the natural wool in for a base, I put a little white glue in the bottom to hold it in place. Step 2, in the center is where I needlefelt the perfect color for the top. Then Step 3, on the right, is where I've needlefelted a design on it. This is way fun. I've got a total of 8 in the works in these little teacup planters and some square planters, then I've got some antique jello molds for more pincushions. The bread in the background really isn't burnt, the photo doesn't do it justice, it's a very yummy lemon blueberry bread to share with a couple of my fiber friends tomorrow that are coming over to learn how to make felted soaps.

Finished needlefelted postcard

Remember the needlefelted postcard I made at a guild meeting last month? Well, I finally figured out how to frame it. Of course I couldn't find the perfect frame so I bought a plain white one, painted it and then stenciled on it using Shiva Paintstiks - I love the way it turned out. Then I needed a way to sign the piece, keep in mind the felting is postcard size. So, I pulled out some black wool felt that I could stitch my name and the year on using my trusty Bernina. After much test stitching where I had to relearn how to imput the text.......correctly! I was ready to stitch on the black wool felt. After that I stitched my piece onto the wool felt using clear sewing thread. I'm happy with how it turned out.

My friend Pat who was one of the program leaders for this project last month gave me a piece she had felted that was also an ocean theme. I finished hers the same way, it turned out great. I can't wait to get over to the beach house to hang both of these on the wall........hmm, where will I put them......

This is not weaving related but it's food related and that's always important. A few years ago I submitted a recipe to Taste of Home Healthy Cooking for a soup recipe contest. I got a letter saying my soup was in the running but then I didn't make the cut to the semi-finals. Too bad since it involved cash prizes! But then last year they published it in the magazine........all I got out of that was an extra issue of the magazine. But in yesterday's mail this beautiful cookbook arrived. At first I was dubious thinking they sent me a cookbook on speculation that they expected me to pay for. But no, there was a letter with it telling me it was a thank you gift and that my soup recipe is on page 53. So if you ever see the cookbook look up my Pasta Fagioli recipe. I made it up several years ago after analyzing the Pasta Fagioli at Olive Garden - I think mine is much better!

Just step away from the needle..........

At our Saturday Weaving Guild meeting two fiber friends of mine presented a program on needlefelting postcards - the theme was to be a fuzzy valentine but I instead chose to bring ocean colors/charms for mine. Remember this is just postcard sized so it's small. We started out with a piece of commercial felt and then needlefelted on top of it. I brought a felted piece of handwoven in greens & purples I had in my stash to use as my background and then needlefelted some other colors on top of it. So, today I did all the embellishing of charms, beads, pearls, embroidery - I spent the better part of the day playing with it......as if I didn't have other things that I should have been doing.......but what the heck, this was fun! Finally I did have to move on to something else, I had to say to myself "just step away from the needle...." I had done enough, it didn't need any more embellishing. Now I need to decide how to display it, it's sitting on a piece of burlap that's auditioning for the role of background. I want to sew it to something, burlap, linen, felt, or something else, then stretch it over foam core and put it in a frame. I wish the seaglass, embroidery, beads and other details showed up better in a photo........

Odds and ends........

Been working on odds & ends today. Cleaned up floor in walk-in closet for fiber stuff....only because I could barely open the door, put away fabric, packed up things for the beach, finished up the little needlefelted pincushions in anticipation of holiday sales and put together more felting bunz kits for sale.

Cinnamon the sheep.........

Ok, so here's what I worked on while the power was out........plus catching up reading several magazines while laying on the porch swing...........

This is my project for my guild challenge. We each got a scent, mine was cinnamon, that were were supposed to use as inspiration for a fiber related project - it could be handspun, woven, knit, felted, whatever. My first thought was woven coasters using the long cinnamon sticks but they would never go over the front beam of the loom without breaking the sticks and I wasn't about to cut off and re-tie on for each coaster. So, plan b was to use cinnamon sticks for a needlefelted sheep's legs. I could have cheated and used one of two warp painted scarves I already had done that happened to be called cinnamon but I didn't.........

So, before the power went out I quickly sewed up a wool felt sheep body and hot glued the cinnamon stick legs in. Now, this isn't my own idea of the felt body - my friend Karen makes sheep like this using rusted nails for legs and locks (washed sheep's fleece before carding) for the sheep's coat. I knew she wouldn't mind if I made the core of my sheep the same way since I'm not going to be selling any of these (this is my one and only!). Check out her etsy shop, Liongate, to see her adorable sheep for sale, not to mention santas, mice, felted gift tags, fiber, etc. etc.

The first picture is of my sewn and stuffed sheep body as I was just starting to needlefelt his coat on. I don't have locks but I do have hundreds of pounds of Ashland Bay Fiber to choose from, I used the Ecru Colonial Wool. So time consuming to give a slight twist to the roving and needlfelt it on. It took hours!!! (which is why this is my one and only). But I kept with it and my Cinnamon Sheep is adorable - check out the second picture! I still need to sew on a couple of bead eyes but I've played with him enough today.....and 3 of my fingers are smarting from running the felting needle through him. I did learn a valuable lesson - don't be too generous with the hot glue gun glueing in those legs because felting needles don't like them, broke a number of them.