Impatient

Well I could not wait for the weather to warm up to make my rug. The way it's going it could be weeks before spring returns and I can felt outside. So I decided to ignore the weather instructions .

I cut the pattern and then the prefelts and laid then out with some fibre shapes on the pattern which was covered in bubble wrap

I made a border and then the squiggly edging using long lengths of merino. I made the edging out of all the colours I as used , pretty randomly . Final touch some green prefelt shapes in the 4 corners.

Then I had to fill in the gaps. This was difficult and tedious , poking the fibres between the shapes and lines. I think I had fallen into my usual trap of not keeping the design simple enough.

At last it can be covered in mule batts and felted. I used about 6 inches high of random fibre.

Felting was hard work. It was difficult to get it soapy enough I think because there was still lanolin in my hand washed mule. And it was difficult to get it all to mesh together. Eventually after seemingly hours i rubbing , i moved on to rolling. Rolling and rolling and rolling. First by hand , then on my swivel chair and finally on an ordinary chair. Ths way all my effect went into the felt not into the chair swiveling. I walked on it and I beat it with a mallet. Lucky I have solid concrete floors.

What a mess I am working in!

Eventually it was as felted and shrunk as I could manage. Not quite as thick as I anticipated but felted back to front.

Considering its inspiration was the shadows and grasses on a river pool I struggle to work out why it reminds me of cactuses.

Posted with Blogsy