Sunday 17 January 2010

Sunday Felting

Long time no felt ... so I thought I might do something new today. I have been following this lovely lovely blog called Bure-Bure, | cannot understand a word of it because the lovely lady is Lithuanian, but she makes the most beautiful felt slippers. I don't know if she understands english but I keep leaving comments telling her how beautiful they are. I wanted to try making some slippers, even though I also have no idea how she goes about getting the shape. I made some plastic resists based vaguely on the shape of my foot, but much bigger ... as it turned out much much too much bigger:-) I was so worried about them turning out too small. Here is how they looked after laying out and wetting and rolling for a bit. You can see how stupidly large they are.
I took the whole lot to the kitchen table and wondered what else to do with them. Dunk suggested I finish them and put them on freecycle. M and I found it all very amusing thinking up good uses for them. I came up with the idea of using them as covers for welly boots... or as a little papoose for a teddy bear. I used Corriedale and found it was less enthusiastic about felting than the Merino, it is a coarser and slightly crimped fibre. In the end I cut one in half and plumped for making another baby hat, since the baby will have grow out of the first one quite soon:
We used Dunk's new floodlights to take the photos and I think it has worked out really well, the subtle pastel colours have come out beautifully. I lined the inside with a darker pink which shows here on the hat brim. Then I chopped part of one side from the other slipper leaving a flap and made it into a little bag. The flap was very resistant to my efforts to tidy the edging so I have left it very 'organic'. I think I will have another go at the slippers with a more sensible sized pattern.

2 comments:

  1. Your hat ad bag are lovely. There is a great way of making slippers. If you wrap bandages of loose wet felt around your feet and between your toes. wet with soapy water. Stick a plastic bag over your feet. Put on your walking boots and go for a 2 mile walk. Voila! I made my first ever felt this way. There are lots of blog posts about it in June 09 if you want a visual reference.

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  2. Hey Martine,

    I came by your blog today after speaking with Julie R-B. Our children do drama together on a Friday and I had been asking about felting.

    So here I am.

    Hope you don't mind me tagging along on your projects, to see what you are doing.

    I did have a question- it is going to sound really stupid, but will give you an indication of how little I know... can you cut the felt once you have made it by hand? Or does this lead to fraying?

    Nice to have found you.

    Kindly

    Ria

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Thanks for stopping by. Thoughts, opinions and suggestions (reading or otherwise) always most welcome.

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