Quick Update

Posted on January 29, 2016 by ruthlane under wet felting

I worked all day today on the First Quarter Challenge for The Felting and Fiber Studio. I didn’t get finished but you can read more about it on my post tomorrow over at the studio site.

This photo is in the middle of the process. And it’s not finished yet so you’ll have to wait to see the end result.

The other thing I have been busy with is my online screen printing course. This week starts the fun stuff so I am looking forward to seeing the prints that the students create. Have a good weekend!

Felted Coffee Cuffs

Posted on November 1, 2013 by ruthlane under wet felting

I started working on some felted pieces that I am planning on putting in the store in time for Christmas shopping. I made three coffee cuffs today. I haven’t done any “small” felting for a while now since I’ve been working on the yurt. It seems I have forgotten a few things. Or perhaps I was just in a hurry 🙂

Here are the three cuffs laid out. I did a very quick layout which is always a mistake in my opinion. The more time you take with laying out your fibers, getting them even etc. the better the end result. But I didn’t do that.

I used a few of the prefelt butterfly cutouts that I had in my stash, indigo dyed merino and yellow/orange silk noil.

This is the same batt that I used for my umbrella tree. It’s got a bunch of different fibers in there and I can’t remember what all I used.

This is an old batt as well. One that I originally used for making slippers. It’s mainly merino and silk noil if I remember correctly. Anyways, when I wet these down, they spread out all over the place and I kept getting ridges when I tried to roll them. So I just ended up doing it all by hand and rubbing them. I fulled them very tightly and put them over a paper coffee cup to dry.

Here they are. They have very organic edges. Usually I do a bit better job with the edges but they will work.

I really like the colors of this one, very autumn colors.

This one turned out better than expected. I don’t really care for butterfly motifs that much.

This photo doesn’t show the variation in colors very well. Perhaps it needs a little hand stitching? But I don’t want to spend too much time on it so I can keep them affordable. I plan on making more of these and the next project will be Kindle and I-pad covers. I also did some free motion stitching on one of my leaf printed scarves and it looks much better. I’ll post about that over at The Fiber and Felting blog next week.

Finishing the Tree

Posted on June 22, 2013 by ruthlane under Felt

I worked on the umbrella tree for the last two days and it’s about finished. I need to decide if it needs a few more details such as moss and what I’m doing on the very top of the umbrella. I got the poem stitched to the trunk and the nuno felt is stitched down to the umbrella ribs.

I placed the poem on the trunk and pinned it in place. Then I stitched it on by hand. This took a while.

Here you can see it stitched down. It definitely adds some texture and looks vaguely like writing but I don’t think most people would see that unless you told them.

These photos are not very good but I think you can see what the trunk looks like with the stitching on it.

And here is the umbrella covering stitched on. Can you see at the very top of the photo that there is a little silver umbrella top? I am trying to decide if I want to have that on the top of the tree or not. It reminds you that it is an umbrella. But I can’t decide. What do you think? I am going to work on the last few details and then get some decent photos taken. I need good photos to send in for the judging process of the exhibition. But I’ll post a good photo here so you can see how it turns out.