Felting Tutorial Part 2: Curly-que

Here is part 2 of my Video Felting Tutorial: Felting a Curly-Que.

This portion of the tutorial covers the actual process of wet felting around the wire form. Part 1 covered how to wind the felt around the wire form and prepare it for wet felting. (If you haven't seen Part 1, it is in yesterday's post!)

Enjoy!



Link to part 1 of the tutorial here: Take me to it!

Felting Tutorial Part 1: Curly-que

I thought that it would be fun for me to start filming a series of tutorials on some basic felting techniques.

So here is the first in that series: How to wet felt a curly-que, just like the one you see here!

These little curls are really useful as embellishments or as fun elements in larger pieces, I use them all the time. Besides, they are a great place to start because they work up quick, don't take much roving, and they are just as whimsical as all get out. They can take something that is kind of ho-hum and elevate it. They can also be just the thing to add a touch of the organic to a piece that is feeling a little staid or static.

I hope you enjoy part 1 of this tutorial, parts two and three will follow shortly!

Part 1: Taming the wool (The wind up)

Part 2: Prepare to get wet (Felting it up)

Part 3: Taking shape (Forming the curl)

Winter White Majesty Necklace

This is the Winter Majesty Necklace. It is a blend of cream and white merino and corriedale rovings that were wet felted and then sculpted. It is embellished with freshwater pearls and some very tiny sweet pearly seed beads. I simply adore the sculptural nature of this piece, and think that it is one of the most visually interesting and inspired things I have made in some time.

I can imagine the White Witch of you-know-where wearing this to a garden party before she drinks some sweet pale wine. It would look amazing with a simply cut evening dress....or a black V-neck T-shirt. It would be divine for a winter wedding! It weighs hardly a thing for being so substantial.

The process of building it was really organic, in that I started with the curly-cues and then went out from there, adding elements and sculpting parts as the necklace called for them. The part that is slightly redolent of a marriage between an open egg and a bird's nest dusted with spun sugar was actually felted around a small stone from my garden, which I then freed from it's woolly captivity. The tiny felt and pearl "cameo" on the opposite side is the doorway through which the stone made it's exit.

I'm almost too much in love with it to let it go....almost, but not quite. It could be yours...just go to Etsy.

Wet Felting Flower Seminar with Carol Cypher

So, I said that it would be coming and here it is. The complete rundown on the Carol Huber Cypher workshop that I went to last weekend. If you can imagine that lovely wooley smell that is slightly redolent of wet dog, then you can feel like you were actually there.

We arrived and were greeted with a long table covered in luscious wool. It was full of little bags filled with roving in stunning color combinations. We each chose our seats and our bags, fully geared up for a full day of felting and fulling. ( Could I use the word "full" there a few more times?)

Then it was time to design our flowers for our lariats. Mine started out looking like the love child of Cousin It and Man Ray. They were puffy and lovely and tempting to pet, but always remember and never forget: Don't pet the felt!

The water came out and it was time to start felting....and rubbing and felting and rubbing some more...with intermittent peeks to check on the progress of the flowers.

Next we moved on to the fulling and shaping of the flowers. Folks went wild here, some ended up with multi-petaled rose/violet hybrids that exist no where but in the imagination. My flower called out to be a trumpet shape, like the Angel Trumpet Flower, so I did my best to give it what it wanted.

Next we made our lariats. This involved essentially laying wisps of roving down over a long length of roving, building up thicknesses where we wanted to cut leaves later, and adding in colors for interest. We then felted these as a rope, and tried not to entangle each other's fibers at the same time.

Below is some great video of Carol explaining how to cut the rope part of the lariat to sculpt it!

Then it was time to bead and assemble. Carol was insanely generous in sharing her impressive bead stash with us. I was immediately drawn to some lavender fringe beads that seemed to be just the thing for my lariat. I didn't want to overdo the beadwork, but I still wanted it to have some pop. I also added a little pekoe stitch beading around the edge of one of the petals for some textural interest.

Here are some photos of the finished product. I really love how it turned out. The image on the left is before it was quite done (hence the hanging thread)...the one on the right is pretty much fully realized. One thing that I did that I love is that I split open the "bump" that I had sculpted into the "pod" end of the lariat and sewed in a lava bead. It looks like a primeval seed.

My husband says that they whole thing looks like it is about to assimilate me , like a Triffid. He couldn't be right....could he?

Carol Huber Cypher: Felting Recharge!

So I got to go to two felting workshops this weekend that were a total creative recharge for me! They were both held at Rumpelstiltskin Yarns, in Sayville NY, and they were taught by the felter and teacher extraordinaire, Carol Huber Cypher. She is truly amazing. She was so patient, kind, generous, and knowledgable. I could have done an entire year of workshops with her and still had more questions to ask...but that is just me. On Saturday we made felt beads all day. Now this is something that I know how to do, but WOW! Working with Carol I really got to go back to the basics and refine my technique. Being self taught, you don't often know when you are doing something wrong, or could be doing something better. This was a perfect time to learn!

We made some wet felted beads (the bi-cone, the burgundy and gold disk, the briolette, the coil, and the "mille fleur" cut) ...then in the afternoon we needle felted.

The green and white knobbly bead is needle felted and covered in silk tussah and is meant to emulate a baroque pearl. I also needle felted the grey white and green bead, the tubular white red and blue beaded bead, and the pair of lungs which will get mounted on a pin backing and worn to classes at school (always the bio-teacher doncha know!)

Next post I will show the Felted Flower Lariat that we made on Sunday...Delicious!

Little Things....

After finishing my Blue Peony, I had enough felt left to make a smaller version. This one is only 2.5 inches across and might be considered the baby brother of the other peonies, or the stunted unfertilized runt. I'm not sure I love it, it lacks a little something in the oomph department. I also didn't double felt it after assembly, so it wouldn't loose even more size and that way it keeps the pinked edges. Who knows, the smaller size might make it more wearable.

Blue peonies...

Sometimes you just have to make something. That great piece of flat felt that I made during my playdate on Friday last just became a peony, a blue peony.

Now, I have never actually seen a blue peony in real life, they may very well exist in some mystical garden out there, but I have seen one on my great-grandmother's coverlet.

My great-grandmother's coverlet was sewn from the drapes that had hung in the dining room of my great-great-grandmother's house. These were staunch Appalachian women. Nothing went to waste. Now the coverlet is folded at end of the bed my grandmother gave my great-grandmother....which has pride of place in the front bedroom of my house.

Blue Peonies....may this one make some lucky woman feel as lovely as these women never knew they were.

Lovely and Lonely

This is what you get when you try to be good.

I have a pile of flat felt that I made waiting to become flowers and a growing herd of beads dying to be turned into jewelry. None of that can happen until I finish certain other obligations.

Phooey on obligations. Phooey I say.

Today may be made for my online classes, but the night will be made for felting (or assembly of already felty-goodness as the case may be)...

And it will be good...

Is that M' Lady's Slipper?

So not too very long ago my Hubby and I were out for a walk at a lovely arboretum in a protected wetland and what did we chance upon but a Lady Slipper Orchid. It was growing wild by the path and was just screaming (or rather politely requesting) that it have it's picture taken. Which of course I obliged. As we walked on, I was stunned by seeing several more. These flowers are an amazing example of co-evolution, as they have evolved to resemble and attract certain insects, fooling the more intrepid arthropods into clambering inside the inviting and rather, well, risque sexy bits of the flower in order to spread the flower's pollen. It works for the flower, and doesn't seem to bother the insects that much, since they go in over and over.

So I took this as a personal challenge to see if I could needle felt a lady slipper....I think I got the IDEA of a lady slipper down, even if it is not a perfect literal translation:

And as you might be able to tell from the scale of my finger there on the left, this felted flower is pretty tiny....

This is where the felting happens...

Felting can be a messy business. Lots of soapy water, bits of fluff, it can get sloppy.

That is why I do it outside, when I can.

Here is where the magic happens.

We had the good fortune to inherit an antique marble ice cream parlor table with our house. It was just too heavy for the previous owners to take with them. It makes a perfect surface for felting. The slats in the deck allow the water to run off without things getting too slippery.

The old washbasin is perfect for holding my hot soapy water. I totally lucked out when I found it at an antique fair last summer for 20 bucks. It spent a year in the shade garden, alternately holding tools, baby plants, ice and beer. I can move it where ever I need it and still have my whole table surface free for felting. It rocks.

The chairs were picked up this summer at my first tag sale foray of the season from a house in Bayport for 30 bucks for six of them. I was able to fit all six in the Jetta. Let's hear it for Volkswagens and their massive cargo space. Woot! They have vinyl seats. They can get kind of hot like Grandpa's Rambler, but the soapy water doesn't hurt them.

The far right corner of the deck is totally overhung with wisteria which makes a great shady place for the infamous Tetra cat to nap on hot days so she can oversee my production.

It is pretty perfect that way. Yup.