Felting

This weekend and part of the week is for felting. I've run out of all the hand made felt I had made up and have been having to make up new batches for my purses and other stuff. I haven't done this in almost 2 years as I didn't have studio space or room to do it. We've been eating over the shop as the kitchen is full of fiber, dye pots and plastic for the floors. I'm dyeing up batches of fibers for both the felting and for my fleece hooking. I've used up a lot of my colors already on projects and am also out of a bunch of shades so I'm doing both the felting and dyeing at the same time to minimize the mess.



Yesterday I got one 30 x 8 foot piece of purse fabric done, though it might end up a shawl. Have to see how light weight it is after it dries fully. I'm calling it Fall Salad as it looks like a fiber salad before and afterwards.




It started out as going to be all dark browns and I started getting low on what I had to work with brown wise so I carded up some miscellaneous fall sort of colors and layered them on top then started adding more and more until I had a sort of fiber salad going. It used Jacob, Black Welsh Mountain, Black Shetland, and Icelandic for the browns, Lincoln, Karakul, Columbia, Merino, Jacob, Icelandic and Shetland for the colors. It took most of Friday to layer and card up enough to have the thickness I needed for the felt. Then it was about 4-4 1/2 hours doing the actual felting. I'm a bit out of shape on this so it took longer than I usually take. I now have a table to work on where as before I was felting on the floor for large pieces like this. The table is better for my back but I was still exhausted and hurt a bit after I was through doing this. At 59 I am really starting to feel my age and what is scary is that I'm in better physical shape than some of my kids.

Here's the finish piece. I'll try to get shots of the backside tomorrow.





I'll be doing a purples and blues piece tomorrow and try to layout a green one, maybe to do a another greenman bag. I also need to make up some fabric for my swap circle project as I will be doing it into a tote bag like I did the Ravens. The felt I just made was going to be for that but I'm not sure if it will work now.

Sheep rug is finished as a hanging now. I got the straps and rings on it. One project down upteen to finsh and time slipping away.