Quangle wangle felting

Ready to go now after all the testing and preparations.

The crumpetty leaves.

The blue baboon without his flute and the bisky bat.

The orient calf, the golden grouse and the pobble who has no toes, at this point not even any legs!

 

The owl and the artery squash , both completly bald and the dong with the luminous nose.

All placed ontop of a large piece of prefelt with loops on the reverse side for hanging purposes covered in 4 layers of laid out carded merino and silk. I used the prefelt first , to give a flatter finish.

The piece part way through felting , unfortunately the sunlight on my felting table makes for not such a good photograph , but you can make out the stork and the owl, and the pobble.

 

The completed felted piece drying on my washing line. Currently there are 16 animals, some still needing lots of stitching to finish them off. The bee is yet to be added , as I decided it was too small to felt.

Next step adding the details .

 

 

 

 

 

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Pleats

I am continuing my exploration into making pleats in felt .

I have continued to try stitching , masking tape and foil with mixed success. I abandoned cling film , it's just too delicate for me.

Overall my Sucess has been better using scrim than habotai ( pongee). Mostly I think this has been down too the fact that slightly different methods of felting is called for by the two fabrics, because of their different structures but this is hard to achieve when working everything together.

Here some tasters of my successes and failures close up of one big piece of felt.

Foil pleated prefelted scrim, works quite well

Stitched prefelt into habotai, works wells , but the fabric is not well attached to the pleats.

Stitched prefelt into scrim . Works well , is more controllable than the foil technique , but takes a lot longer to do.

Masking tape pleats on scrim , which is pretty effective and on habotai which is not successful . With the scrim the tape can be used to stick two sides of a pleat together , this does not work with the close woven habotai and so it's impossible to get the same effect. Used in a different way I think the tape would be a good way of making bubbles in the silk , by preventing it attaching to fibres trying to penetrate it.

So mixed effects which is a success as that is what I was trying to achieve.

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Seams

When asked how to fasten two pieces of felt together I go back to my sewing roots , and think straight seams and French seams. With more thought I realised that with felt the possibilities are enormous. You can of course sew felt in a traditional way and get a traditional effect. But if you sew it at the prefelt stage , well you can either create an stand out seam or you can make the seam almost completley invisible.

Here is an example, a very small sample.

It almost looks like piping.

Then of course you might want an invisible seam , and these example would be almost invisible if I had chosen a more sympathetic thread colour.

My favorites seams are using a fabric or yarn to make the seam , I think this could look really cool , with slightly more exciting colours , and adds a flexibility that could be very wearable in a felted garment.

All I need now is to work out how to make a jacket so I can use my seaming skills.

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Samplers

In my head, samplers are regular organized pices of needlework , usually with a psalm or poem incorporated. A bit like this one , made quite a long time ago.

According to wikepedia they did not start like this. Women used them to record a stitch they had seen and did not want to forget. This was in the 15th and 16th century . The samplers were 6-9 inches wides and were totally covered in stitches. They were highly valued and often passed down through the generations. By the 18th century they became a way of showing skill at stitching and at this point started to incorporate religious or moral quotations.

So I have gone back in time , and I am making a felt sampler to record the effect of stitches, added before felting , at the prefelt stage and after felting. This sampler is currently just about to start the stitching after the final felting stage and Is pretty disorganized affair. I have tried to keep to a purple /pink theme and tested hand stitching and machine stitching. Until I read up about the origin of samplers , I wasn't so happy with my work. But understanding the history has made it all make a lot more sense. Here and some examples of my stitches so far.

Stitching onto pongee and then felting it all in . The transparency of the silk , means the underneath stitches are visible. Not so good. Underneath some stitching at the prefelt stage , I like the couching , but the chain has become too loose as the fibres shrunk.

Stitching on bought prefelt , with my machine and adding it on top of the fibres. Quite effective.

Some stitches made after prefelting. I like the effect of the knots and the pleat, but I am not so sure about the blanket stitch around the eyehole.

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Samplers

In my head, samplers are regular organized pices of needlework , usually with a psalm or poem incorporated. A bit like this one , made quite a long time ago.

According to wikepedia they did not start like this. Women used them to record a stitch they had seen and did not want to forget. This was in the 15th and 16th century . The samplers were 6-9 inches wides and were totally covered in stitches. They were highly valued and often passed down through the generations. By the 18th century they became a way of showing skill at stitching and at this point started to incorporate religious or moral quotations.

So I have gone back in time , and I am making a felt sampler to record the effect of stitches, added before felting , at the prefelt stage and after felting. This sampler is currently just about to start the stitching after the final felting stage and Is pretty disorganized affair. I have tried to keep to a purple /pink theme and tested hand stitching and machine stitching. Until I read up about the origin of samplers , I wasn't so happy with my work. But understanding the history has made it all make a lot more sense. Here and some examples of my stitches so far.

Stitching onto pongee and then felting it all in . The transparency of the silk , means the underneath stitches are visible. Not so good. Underneath some stitching at the prefelt stage , I like the couching , but the chain has become too loose as the fibres shrunk.

Stitching on bought prefelt , with my machine and adding it on top of the fibres. Quite effective.

Some stitches made after prefelting. I like the effect of the knots and the pleat, but I am not so sure about the blanket stitch around the eyehole.

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Experiments

On Friday I spent a lovely day felting with a friend. In fact the friend who taught me to felt. Truthfully we spent most of the day talking so we were not so productive in terms of felt actually made but we shared many ideas on how to do things . We discussed the incorporation of stones and pebbles , under here are some shiny glass stones. It will be interesting to see how they glint though when it is felted.

We did a small test of using prefelt under fabric to create bubbles.

This has worked I think, and probably works better if you use felt instead of prefelt. Eventually this will become a hat.

The remaining question for Friday was how to make waves in felt on a small scale . It is quite easy to visualize how to do this on a huge felted piece . Here is an example we like.

You can see more like this at http://www.annekecopier.nl

But how to make the same effect on a small scale. I thought with use of prefelt and embellishing but I am not sure this would give sharp enough lines.

Meantimes I have a draft brief from a very fussy client , myself , to complete for my course so I think that takes priority for now and waves will have to wait. But if we could crack it it could fit very well with this years Felt United's theme of water.

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Blue

This week I have been really challenged trying to dye prefelt blue. Not yellow or red that was easy just blue. The problem was disguised at first. I successfully dyed a yellow and a orange piece along with and a mottled pink. I then mixed some blue into yellow and orange to make I hoped a brilliant lime green, an olive green and a brown. They were rather disappointing , in that instead of making green , I made shades of dirty yellow and instead of brown a rather reddish orange. But I thought I could make it work and continued to try and make a dark blue and a pale blue. What I made was two quite large pieces of very pale blue. It was then I realized that the problem with the green and brown was that the blue in the mixtures was virtually invisible. This was happening to both brilliant blue and turquoise. This is overall colour combination I had made. A totally dire mixture I am sure you will agree.

So I began to think about what had gone wrong. Was the concentration of the blue dye too weak, had it not dissolved properly, was the vinegar solution not acidic enough, had I not steamed the prefelt for long enough , had I rinsed it too soon... Endless possibilities of were the process could have gone wrong.

So I tried increasing the concentration , slightly better but still nothing like the effect I was looking for. Testing different vinegar concentrations, no discernible difference. Steaming longer and cooling down in dye mix before rinsing. At last this seemed to have cured the problem, perhaps not the vibrant blue I hoped for , but not a total wash out. So I have now redyed all the samples containing blue except the olive and now have this collection of prefelt to work with.

Now I only have the challenge of making a piece and felting it in the washing machine !

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