Today I cut out my felt applique and got it ready to stitch and painted some acrylic felt.

 First, here are hubby’s slippers with their bottoms of spray-on Plasti Dip.

 This was much easier than trying to brush it on and the edges look professional. They are now water proof and I think will last much longer than without it. I highly recommend this product for slippers. No affiliation, I just like how it works.

 Here is the blue felt with fusible ironed to the back. I traced the pattern on to the fusible backing paper.

 You can see it a little better here. I cut it out carefully so I could use the positive and negative images.

 Here’s the negative image. I put it on a piece of orange prefelt to show you how it will look. Unfortunately, the prefelt isn’t big enough. I’ll have to make another piece of felt to go with this one.

 Here’s the one I’m going to stitch. It is fused down on to the red felt. After stitching it down, I will couch a cord around the applique. I have to find some and decide what color to use.

 Then I painted some acrylic felt with Dye-na-Flow paint.

 You have to get these really wet and use a lot of paint otherwise the paint just sits on top of the felt.

I actually did some felt making today. It was just a couple of flat pieces of felt to make an applique but it was great to get my hands in the wool again. Then I worked on finishing up some projects and started on my beaded tassel.

 Here is one  of the piece’s of felt. I did quite a bit of dry rolling before I ever started to wet the felt down. It really speeded up the processs. Do you dry roll your felt?

This corner got cut a bit too close.

 Here’s the finished sample. This photo is closer to the true colors.

 Here’s a more straight on view. I used a dark brown thread for the edge so it wouldn’t show.

 The other project I worked on  was my husband’s slippers. I made them a long time ago but had promised to put plastic on the bottoms.

This is one of those days where I didn’t get much done. I was busy at work unpacking a big order of ceramics, tutoring someone on Quickbooks and then of course a few customers. So I started to work on a tassel for my bead book but I didn’t get very far. I made a twisted cord and wrapped the thread around the tassel template. That was it.

 The photo of the cord didn’t come out. Here is the tassel beginnings. Not too exciting, huh?

While I was unpacking the ceramics, I found these Styrofoam twisty bits in the peanuts. I’ve never seen these before. They were really cool looking. I’m not sure what you could do with them but at least they make a great design. So I got in 5 minutes of fiber. Tomorrow I’ll have the entire day so that will be more productive.

I finished my shadow applique piece today that I started yesterday except for the edges/finishing. I need an iron for that and I don’t have one handy here at work for some reason. I also continued to work on the design for my folk design inspired applique. I am basing this design on Kyrgyzstan carpets or shyrdak.

Here is the finished applique. You can just barely see the silk organza sticking out around the edges. I need to fold that over and fuse it to the back and then stitch around the edge. I think I will stitch the edge in a reddish brown so that it doesn’t show much. I don’t think I want to stitch it in green.

 Here’s a close up. I drew the stitching lines on with pencil so I had something to follow.

 Here is one of the designs that I am considering for my next applique piece. I am going to make this from hand made felt so actual felt making is going to occur amazingly enough. I laid out some blue wool today. Perhaps I’ll get it felted tonight. I already have a piece of red prefelt so I’ll use that as well.

 Here are four other design possibilities. These are all based on “ram’s horns” and from photos I found online of various shyrdak. I cut the patterns out from paper and glued them down in my journal. There are endless variations. I think I might just do one of the emblems instead of four connecting ones on a four inch square of felt. But perhaps I’ll go for it and do all four squares.

 The Kyrgyz use a lot of negative and positive space/shapes in their work. They usually cut out the pattern in two different colors and use both the positive shapes and the backgrounds to create intricate designs. Which design do you like? I haven’t decided but I know it won’t be the bottom left one as it is way too intricate to try and cut out of hand made felt. It will most likely be one of the simpler shapes.

Today I am back to stitching my applique homework, specifically a shadow applique sample from cotton fabric and an overlay of silk organza.

 Here is my sample piece that I tried out a variety of colors of threads to see which I liked the best. I did not used to do this but I find it really does help in choosing the right color of thread. I tried a dark reddish brown, burnt orange, pink and green. I never even considered the green but after I tried the first three and none of them did much for me, I decided to try green. And I really liked it. It makes the stitching stand out against the background. (click on the photo to see the different thread choices more closely)

 Here is the entire design and I’ve got about a quarter of it stitched. It is really hard to show the true colors because the silk organza disappears under the camera. The piece is actually darker and the green “pod” shapes are not as bright.

Here is the stitching design that I’m using. I made 8 different designs and chose the one I liked best.