Madame On Felt

You know that I've got this slight obsession with polymer clay faces right? Yup. Well actually it's kinda strange because I have a little container full of the faces I've moulded thus far, all sitting there ready for action, to be part of creative endeavours and wondrous things. But then I get thingy about it and don't want to use them, like I'm some sort of weird, over protective parent or something. sheesh

Anyway, in saying all that, the other day I DID use one of my little people. I had a yearning to make another wool felt keyring having made one once before with a bit of embroidery on it, but this time I wanted to use a face.

I had another go at using bullion stitch for hair. I reckon it makes cool hair, a bit like ringlets. And I had more practice with scroll stitch around the edge in purple.


And Madame herself is attached by way of three holes I poked in the edges of her head before she was baked. I was a bit worried that the weight of her face would warp the shape of the keyring so I counter-weighted her with a polymer clay bead on the back. And equally handy was the fact that the bead has holes in it too, so I ran the stitches in between the holes in the two clay things, which has made everything nice and stable.


I tried something a bit different for the edge treatment this time. First I just did a whip stitch (I think that's what it's called, just ordinary stitching round and round the edge). But as I was doing it, I threaded a long silver bead on every second stitch. It was difficult to keep them all straight and even but regardless of that I quite like the look. And it's very nice and feely to run your fingers around the edge.


And on a complete change of subject, I thought I'd throw in a photo of our lime tree, which has obviously hit some untapped source of nutrition underground because it is absolutely dripping with blossom at the moment. It smells lovely.


And the old apricot tree has started blossoming too. We've had the apricot tree for about 25 years and it's been a legend, producing kilos and kilos of fantastic fruit. But the last 3 years it's done virtually nothing and Steve has tried all sorts of different ways to prune it to try and coax it back into fruiting life. Most of the branches are showing promise with spatterings of blossom, but here we have one smartarse overachiever, one scrawny little twiglike branch completely covered with flowers. We are watching with interest to see what results.

The Warrior Princess

You know how I've been playing with making polymer clay faces lately? I've got a little box full of clay personalities, solemn, furtive, peaceful, proud, all sorts, all silent yet saying a lot. This particular face appeals to me, she is strong yet gentle, proud yet compassionate, and I wanted to save her for something a bit special.

I've been interested in the Comfort Doll project and the co-ordinator for the Southern Hemisphere is Jo from "No Matter Where I Go... I Always Meet Myself There". She is collecting dolls and each time there is a dozen they will be donated to a Womens' Shelter, the idea being to send a message of encouragement from a stranger in the form of an art doll. A strong compassionate doll I thought, a warrior princess.

I had some wool felt left over from the batch I made for my tea cosy which I thought might be suitable. I love the colours in it, and when the piece was felted it reminded me of the ocean, which seemed appropriate as the ocean is strong and follows its own path.

I stitched her body in the womanly figure-eight shape, not only to show her femininity, but also because she is very holdable being clasped around her waist. I needle felted a red heart for her compassion and caring, centred with a flower bead to show positive feelings 'blossoming'. An embroidered flower at the bottom shows flourishing, gaining in strength.

I wanted her to have a proud, strong, protective look, yet beautiful and adorned, so I started by looping and knotting different coloured yarns to give almost a headdress look. Her face is surrounded with green scroll stitch, with a gold bead in between each knot, and then embroidered around that with white basque stitch. She's wearing a beaded necklace with a protective amulet to keep all around her safe.


I finished her off with a quirky little hairpiece made from an enamelled bead and strings of small blue beads. Because she is a lady.

I really enjoyed making her, thinking about how to adorn her and for what reasons. If she manages in any way to give an abused woman or her children something to smile about even briefly then that's a good thing. Jo, she'll be winging her way over to you tomorrow.

Sunseeking

Brrr, it's been so cold this week. The sort of of weather when a sun soaked cushiony quilty corner seems the perfect place to snuggle down with my laptop and catch up on blogging.


I finished my tea cosy, gee I love it. I think I'm drinking twice as much tea just so I can use it lots. :-) I ended up running a row of machine straight stitch around the edge for strength, then used Butterfly Chain Stitch for a decorative embroidered edge.


I am so in love with wool felt. I knew diddly squat about it until a couple of months ago, but at the moment I want to make everything out of it, and stitch on it constantly. I love the way embroidery stitches slightly sink in to the felt and nestle in. It's also handy for running the loose end of the thread inside, so it can't be seen. A friend of mine has a birthday this week so I thought I'd make her a little something. A little wool felt keyring, adorned with my two favourite embroidery stitches to date, Whipped Wheel Stitch and edged with Butterfly Chain Stitch again.


I caught up a little with my Take A Stitch Tuesday stitches too, by adding some dragon breath flames done in Satin Stitch with extra spitty bits of flames done in single Wheatear stitch. I wanted the satin stitch area to look reasonably raised, so I cut the flame shape out of a scrap, thin piece of red felt, laid it down and satin stitched over it. Which achieved the aim of raising it up, but also, being red, meant you can't see any wonky gaps between the stitches. I'm so clever I scare myself sometimes. ;-)


I made a cake, complete with beautification. I got a piece of paper and folded it up and cut bits out of it like we used to do as kids to make snowflake Xmas decorations, then plonked it on the cake and sprinkled icing sugar over it. Kinda funky eh


Steve's been planting out his vegie patch. He tries each year to plant things earlier and earlier in the season, to try and get some things harvested before the cabbage white butterflies arrive en mass in spring. It's looking good with the promise of things to come.

Cosy Tea

I like making tea in a teapot. A pretty blue and white china teapot to be precise. The main reason I like using my teapot is that when I've poured the teas I partly refill the pot with more boiling water, so I can have another cup of tea a bit later - for free! No work! Excellent! And to keep that refilled pot hot I usually dump a tea towel over the top. Now, while this is relatively effective in keeping the tea hot, it's not exactly pretty. Which brings me, finally (yes I know, I do prattle on sometimes) to the topic of this blog post.

I want to make a teapot cosy. I toyed with a number of different fibres and methods, and eventually decided to make a wool felt cosy. So a few weeks were spent with my mind rolling around colours - I nearly always use bright colours even without intending to, but this time I really wanted to try for something more subtle, wah, it's so hard! Eventually the day came, I had to stop procrastinating and just get on with that wet wool felting! I chose teal, dark brown and light brown roving, with a few tiny bits of mustard, burgundy and sea green. Then it was a case of fumbling around with the hand carders I've just bought, to blend the colours together a bit before laying them out in the roving sandwich.


The I laid out a few pieces of squiggly discarded spun yarn.


Then the hot water and soap got sloshed around and the massaging began. It's the most incredible process - how wool felts itself. Really quite amazing.


And finally, we have felt. And, it's not bright! Yay, I've discovered subtle! :-)


Ok, this is good, I'm happy with the colour. Then I decided that I wanted the word "brew" somewhere on the felt. I toyed with applique and embroidery but finally decided on needle felting. Then there were big thinks on how to do this so that the letters didn't look like they were constructed by a drunk person. I ended up cutting out the letter shapes with a scalpel on an ice cream container lid, positioned the lid on the wool felted background and 'filled' the letter shapes with some cream coloured roving and needle felted it into place. I also needle felted some tiny wispy bits around the letters to represent steam, but I'm not totally sure if I like that so I stopped. I'm thinking I might do a bit of embroidery along that vein later on, still undecided on that.


It took me another week to pluck up the courage to cut out the tea cosy shape - I was terrified I was going to stuff it up. Eventually, this morning, I spent an hour cutting up newspaper templates until I found the shape and size that seemed to sit nicely over the teapot. So, it was take a deep breath, pick up those scissors, and cut! This is the back.


And this is the front. It's not sewn together yet and I think I'm going to use embroidery stitches to piece it together. I made a couple of felted balls with the leftover roving, and I want to use one of these on the top of the teacosy as a handle.


I'm a girl who like to take things slowly, as evident by this massive blog post to explain my big long thinks about how to do this. Is it just me or do others think themselves into near insanity so as to cogitate over every possible way to create something? Just as well I don't make a living from making things. :-)

Take a Stitch Tuesday - Crossed Buttonhole Stitch

This week's TAST challenge was Crossed Buttonhole Stitch.


I had a good play with this stitch on the wool felt I made last week. I have some of the other TAST girls to thank for the discovery of how fabulous this stuff is to embroider on - I've been admiring other peoples' samples on wool felt, so much so that I choofed off down to the library and found myself some books on how to make my own wool felt. I think I could get addicted.... just what I need, a new craft addiction :-)

Anyway, crossed buttonhole stitch. I started stitching meandering lines of this stitch, changing the thickness of thread, changing the colours, stitching upside down and in a circle, overlapping a couple of lines, until I felt that I'd produced a fairly broad array of stitches. Then I put my work down and had a look at it, then it struck me...


There was a little creature looking at me! Like a cute little dragon or something. How cool to have a little being bursting forth amidst random stitches - I was quite chuffed and felt somewhat motherly....

Then I took some photos, and this one, taken on a slight angle, created some confusion. Cos now it looks like a bird!


A slightly peeved, prehistoric bird to be precise. With a glittery beaded eyeball.


It just goes to show, there is excitement to be found in embroidery... :-)

Take a Stitch Tuesday - Butterfly Chain Stitch

This week's stitch for TAST is Butterfly Chain Stitch, an interesting combination of two different stitches. Firstly is a row of vertical stitches and then these are knotted together with a horizontal row of twisted chain stitch.

I did lots of thinking and experimenting with this stitch, I think it's quite versatile and pretty, particularly as an edge. As I've been making wool felt this week, my thoughts wandered to that. I decided to cut the felt up into smaller pieces as it is very bright and I thought if it was smaller then it would calm it down a little. Then I started thinking about whether this stitch was strong enough to stitch two pieces of felt together. Then I wondered if I could go so far as to attempt something 3D, like a small open box.


It was quite a fiddly exercise, I found it hard to hold the felt in place but at the same time to do the line of straight stitches loose enough so the sides of the box would actually bend. I used Perle 5 thread for strength and popped a few beads here and there for prettiness and to cover the raw edges on the tops of the side seams.

I then stitched a line of butterfly chain stitch as an edge stitch "over the top" of the upper edge, so it ended up that the knotted line of twisted chain stitch goes along the top edge. Am I making any sense at all? I feel like I'm tripping over words tonight!


In the corners of the bottom edge I used 6 vertical straight stitches knotted together, with three from each side, in an attempt to stabilise the box and pull it together a bit more. The inside of the little box is a bit messy, with the debris of stitches and knotted threads everywhere. I'm thinking I might glue a light fabric lining inside it, for both strength and tidiness.


I think it's kinda cute. :-)

I Need To Work On Subtle

Considering the fact that there has been an explosion of wool around our house, I thought I'd like to try my hand at some wet wool felting. I've been admiring the wool felt backgrounds that a lot of embroiders work on, the stitches seems to nestle into it ever so nicely, so I skipped into the craft room and gathered handfuls of the many colours of wool roving Meshell and I seem to have spent all our pocket money on recently.


First, lay out 3 layers of base roving, horizontal then vertical then horizontal again (for strength I believe). As we have masses of bright green roving I thought I'd use that. Then it's a case of placing wisps/stripes/blobs of whatever colour takes your fancy to produce a layout you are happy with. I need to work on my subtle side, I don't do subtle very well at all.... :-)


I thought I'd be a smarty pants and added some novelty yarn to the blue piece, it's a sort of feather acrylic yarn, and you need to add wisps of wool over the top of anything acrylic so it become part of the felt. As it turned out I later removed these feathery acrylic bits cos it ended up looking like some soggy dead thing - put it down to experience and next time just stitch it on afterwards!


Then, cover the wool with a piece of old net curtain, then pour on hot water and gently rub with a bar of soap. Then gradually work the water and soap in with your fingertips, moving from the middle outwards and gradually increasing in pressure. Then you change to rubbing with the palms of your hands, sort of in a circular polishing motion, until it starts to felt together (for me it was about 7 minutes).

Then (when it's holding together enough to move) you place your wool onto a piece of bamboo blind or mat (I used one of those bamboo mats you make sushi with), gently pull it into shape, then roll it up in the bamboo. Gently squeeze the bamboo roll to remove excess water, then wrap the roll in a piece of sheet and roll it back and forth like you are using a rolling pin. After a minute or two unroll it and turn the piece 90 degrees on the bamboo and repeat, gradually rolling more tightly and strongly each time. Keep doing this until you are satisfied with the amount of felting. You'll find each time you unroll it that it has shrunk in one direction - that's the felting process at work. I think I changed direction 6 or 7 times and rolled for a minute or so each time.

Edit: PS, I forgot this bit... then when you are finished felting, rinse the piece in cold then hot water a couple of times, which gets rid of the soap and also shocks the fibres and strengthens and settles them a bit more.


I was surprised to find that the very wispy bits I'd used actually looked even more distinct in the end, but I guess if you think about it, because the felting brings all the fibres closer together and shrinks the piece, that intensifies the colours even more. Which, I must say, my colour choice didn't actually need! This was a good learning experience, firstly in how felting works (so cool!), and that next time I must put my subtle and sensible hat on when choosing colour


The other thing that surprised me was the lack of movement of the wispy bits that I'd laid on the top. I thought with all the rub-a-dub-dubbing that any patterning would move about and get distorted, but that wasn't the case at all. Interesting...


I think I'll cut these pieces up into something smaller, and embroider on them. My mission with wool felt is to make a teapot cosy, but I'll need to hunt down a bigger piece of bamboo mat as the mats I have now make pieces that are a bit too small.

End result: A fun hour playing with a new craft, and learned lots of things along the way. Wool is amazing stuff, it's sort of 'alive'.