Coptic Bound Book

Check it out!  I bound a book!  It's not the first one I've ever done, but it is definitely the best!  I followed an on-line tutorial for a double needle coptic binding, used signatures that I folded at the Athens Art brown bag lunch lecture on book binding, and felted my own cover decoration (the cardboard covers were first covered with a cream, linen-like fabric, then the felted decoration was sewn to the cream cover).  After all was said and done, I discovered that the book was so nice, I was hesitant to write in it!  So I gave it to a friend.  She was thrilled to get a new journal book!

Just so I remember, the decorations on the felt are all crocheted.  Anita Mayer in her DVD "Creative Cloth" describes using crochet chains as embroidered embellishments as well as yarn wound rings.  My rings are 100% yarn--no plastic inside.  I started with a sliding loop and crocheted over that.

The Tortoise and the Hare

Needle felting is fun.  It's portable.  It's creative.  It's a bit like the story of the tortoise and the hare--speedy in some places, but slow and steady wins the race.

The hare is designed to go on a single finger.  He is made from grey wool. That's how it is labeled  in my stash--"grey wool".  It's a cross between different breeds--maybe cotswold and romney and shetland--a gift from a family friend years ago.  The facial details are from random bits of fiber in my felting bag.  One thing I learned as I searched for pictures of rabbits (after I had made most of the puppet) is that rabbits don't usually show their front teeth.  A google search for images of rabbits had only one or two where their teeth were at all visible unless someone was holding their mouth to show the teeth!  Drawings of rabbits showed a lot of teeth, but the photographs did not.  I removed the teeth from my hare!

The tortoise is a three finger puppet.  His head goes on the middle finger and his legs on the ring finger and the pointer.  He's really cute!  He even has a little tail.  I was going to make him very green--until I did another google image search.  Most tortoises aren't green.  In fact most turtles aren't very green (some are--some are very green!).  I was surprised and put away my green fibers.  Out came the more desert colored browns and tans.

What shall I do with my pair of puppets?  Right now they are in my display case.  I'm not sure this pair is sturdy enough for children's toys.  The tortoise legs are alpaca fiber and it doesn't felt as firmly as wool, making the legs a little too flimsy for young children.  At some point, though, my display case is going to get too full.  What shall I do with all my "shrunken heads" and other odds and ends that I've created?  What do you do with your creations?

Needle Felted Friends

 To the left are the pieces of a needle felted doll.  The body parts are all loosely felted to a "cubit" standard. (Check out this post about human proportions by a cast bronze artist, David Lemon.  The cubit is the length from the elbow to the tip of the fingers.  In adults, it is roughly 18".  The human body is about four cubits tall.  I've learned that I'm not so good at creating felt creations with the cubit standard!)

 The pieces get felted together--leg pieces together; arm pieces together.  Then they are attached to the body and clothed.  This piecing technique comes from Ruth Lane's The Complete Photo Guide to Felting.  The upper leg and lower leg are stacked one on top of each other and felted just enough to hold them together.  Then the leg is wrapped in more felt to help hold the pieces together, but maintain flexibility.  In the case of the legs, I used the brown alpaca fibers to do the wrapping and made the pants at the same time.

 After all the pieces were attached, including the head, my creation posed with another felted face--a star.

Here the star and an unfinished "weeble" (anyone remember the "weebles wobble, but they don't fall down" toys?) take a break.   I wonder what they've been saying to each other.  :)

Wet Felting and Needle Felting

I recently stumbled upon the Feltmaker's List FAQ.  One of the many links on the page was information about sampling wools to learn how they felt.  I have three or four types of wool in my stash, and while I know they all felt, I was curious to see a side-by-side comparison. 

 The simple test was to take a length of roving, split it into two and lay the two pieces on top of each other in the palm of the hand with the fibers of each layer perpendicular to each other.  Add a little soapy water and light agitation, tuck the wispy ends in towards the center, and viola!  Felt happens! 

The Cotswold roving felted quickly--they all felted quickly; 2 to 3 minutes tops--and made a dense felt.  The Romney took a bit more work and is less dense and more springy than the Cotswold. The pin drafted Romney was more irregular and more poorly interconnected than the roving form.  The brown wool is a beautiful fiber and I think it's a Romney cross.  It felts nicely, but I'm not sure if it will end up being felted or spun!


Along with the samples, I took my new tool, a felting stone, and wet felted the purple hat I've been making. The hat was first needle felted, then wet felted by hand, but ended up being too big.  I repeated the needle felting, but had to work up the energy to do the wet felting again!   The stone sped up the wet felting process significantly! 

Here's the hat drying on a small beach ball on a plastic container (ok, so it's really makeshift, but it works! :)  An the blue oval with rectangles is the felting stone.  

Here's the finished hat.  It's been trimmed to length and I've blanket stitched the cut edge and turned up the brim. 

It looks great on my cone of yarn, but I can't wait to see if it looks good on it's intended owner!

My First Needle Felted Hat

Where to start?  I got the final push to needle felt a hat when I found a website that had a "do-it-yourself" multi-felting needle holder.  My modification on what I saw and read was to put two needles through the holes in a button.  Viola!  Instant multi-needle holder!  The photo shows the needles with two buttons.  I ended up adding a third to keep the needles straighter, but it works great!  (And even better, it was free!  I have tons of buttons!--These lavender ones were a gift from my friend Jenny in Michigan many years ago!)

So, the multi-needle holder isn't the only thing I made for this hat.  I also created a foam hat form.  The cheapest I found these online was $15 from Living Felt...but I was having a hard time shelling out even that much money when I wasn't sure how I would like the process--or which size form to get!  So I made my own.  I found a tall plastic container and covered it with two layers of 1/2" foam (leftover from another project a year or more ago).  I made sure the circumference of the form was close to the desired circumference of the hat.

I had previously needle felted six 1/2 ounce batts of wool into a single unit.  I wrapped the needle felted wool around the hat form, trimmed it to size and created the top of the hat.  After a bit of felting, I took the wool off, turned the hat inside out, and felted more on the other side.  I did that a few times.

The last felting step was a wet one--I actually wet felted the needle-felted wool hat (I'm not fond of wet felting.  It seems to take forever!)  I felted the hat over another plastic container--again, one that was the right dimensions for the finished hat, and then let the hat dry. --No one in my family seemed too attached to the hat at this point.

   

But, after the hat was dry, I had my daughter try it on (technically the hat is for her.  I may borrow it from time to time!) and tested the length...way too long.  I turned up the brim, added some trim, and viola!  A needle-felted hat!

Fiber Call Out!

In connection with "Grandma's Room", a teaching location here in town, I am helping with a Fiber Call Out for Montgomery County.  Knitters, crocheters, spinners, weavers, hookers, dyers of all levels (even wanna-be's!) are welcome to join us.  We will meet on Tuesday, Sept. 11th at Grandma's Room in Crawfordsville, IN at 6:30pm.  Hope to see you there!

Our demonstration for the evening is "Handling Wool".  We'll be playing with wool--looking at characteristics such as fiber length and crimp--and making hand felted balls to take home.  The wools in the photo, from right to left, are Cormo (pink), Shetland (copper), and unknown (dark brown).  Guess which one hand felts the best?  Yep!  The unknown wool.  I don't know it's breed.  I can take some guesses.  I can tell you what it's not...  But it rolled into beautiful felted balls with almost no work!  I can't wait to take it to the group on Tuesday!

All Because of Ellen....

I'm going to blame this pretty piece on my friend Ellen. She is a felter, as well as a very accomplished weaver and she loves reds.

I've been reading a number of different things about felting knitting and weaving and came across the idea of starting the felting process by hand (hot water w/soap, followed by a cold water plunge--repeated a few times as desired) then putting the piece in the dryer to finish it off.

I tried it. I liked it!

The piece in the photo was handspun Romney wool that I dyed (a two-ply yarn) alternating with a commercial wool that I had dyed Turkey red in a dyeing class. It was woven in plain weave with the yarns sett at 6 epi and the weft at 6 ppi. It was kind of lacy and open when I took it off the loom! I did two hot water/cold water washes with it then put it in the dryer! Voila! The open plain weave piece turned into a beautiful piece of felt (30% shrinkage in both directions) ! I am so pleased! I'm so pleased that I've been spinning and spinning to make more yarn so I can weave and felt more!