The Finished "Leopard Print" Dress

As promised, here are some photos of me sporting the finished dress. I wore it to my Spinners Weavers and Dyers Guild AGM and it was a real hit!

With a little "help" from Pickle 

This photo was taken while doing the final shaping, I think it is really interesting how the colour of the silk changes when wet (pieces at the top of the picture).

I  have been quite busy this week, finishing the cape with hundreds of felted tassels, I enjoyed making it but it really did take hours and hours to hand felt all those tassels! I just need to edge the neckline and add a button.

This weekend I started working on a textured wall hanging that has been festering in the back of my mind since I saw a photo of icicles hanging from a roof back in November.

This is the sketch I made at the time, as you can see it really was just a seed of an idea at the time...

I raided my goody bag looking for some interesting textures and found some silk noil and different grades of wool nepps along with some hand dyed mulberry silks that I think will make a lovely, colourful addition to the icicles. You know how ice has a sparkly quality when the light hits it just right? I thought some angelina might replicate that effect quite nicely.

Laying out the base (it's about 3ft x 4 ft)

Starting to lay out the "icicles" with some flashes of colour provided by the mulberry silk.

More on the Icicles hanging next time...

I also managed to finish my "leopard print" dress this week too, I was surprised at how long this one took, I can usually make a dress in 2 days but this took all day Sunday and then every evening last week, I finally finished it on Saturday morning! This is the front:

And the back:

I hope to get a photo of me wearing it next week.... watch this space :)

New Year New Goals

I can't believe we are already 3 days into 2015.... so I am already late setting my new goals; not the most auspicious start! :)

My first 2 goals are essentially carried over from last year but they really worked for me so I will carry on with those with just some small edits.

1. Post to my blog at least once per week and to Facebook twice per week
2. Maintain at least 90 listings on Etsy
3. Attend at least 2 workshops with other feltmakers to further develop my felting repertoire
4. Start teaching felt making

Number 2 is an interesting one for me, as we approached Thanksgiving last year I set myself a target of having 90 items listed in my Etsy shop and I noticed a significant increase in sales soon after (not difficult to achieve, you might think, given that I had only sold 8 pieces in the 13 months prior). Initially I put the sales spurt down to a Christmas rush but I have had 5 more sales since Christmas (I'm still bouncing round the house with joy that other people like my work! :) ) so it can't just be people buying Crimbo presents.

Number 3 is a bit of a cheat since I have already signed up for a hat making class with Judit Pocs (I am so excited I can barely sit still) and I already have an idea of what I would like to do for the second one (more on that once it has been confirmed). But I do think it is important to keep learning from each other and expanding our horizons.

Number 4 is still just a handful of seeds in my mind, a few people have suggested I write a tutorial and I have ideas for at least 3 but the new EU VAT rules that came into force on January 1st put a spanner in those plans for a while but after much reading and networking I think there may be a work-around if I email the tutorials (it still isn't clear if ALL the EU countries will agree this is acceptable). I also like the idea of doing some face-to-face teaching although it scares the hell out of me! There is a studio near me that runs a variety of workshops but as far as I can see felting is not on their menu, so I have plans to go and have a chat with the owner.... watch this space :)

I hope you have been taking a few days from your day job and have found time to be creative over the last week or so?  I have been having a whale of a time, here are a few images of the things I have been working on:

A pair of fingerless gloves to match my felt jacket:

Another pair of fingerless gloves with silk hankies for decoration:

A couple of nuno felt scarves:

A black-widow spider inspired cape - in this photo it looks more like a dangerous creature from the deep :)

Rolling the tassels for the fringes took forever, I am so glad it is now finished and busy drying!


A new nuno felt top for me :)

layout of the silk over a resist

layout of wool over the silk

I plan to wear this next week - will try to get a photo of it on, seeing it laid flat on a table under artificial lights really doesn't do it any justice...

What have you been up to over Christmas? Have you made any resolutions or set goals for 2015? I hope your start to 2015 had been great and reflects how the rest of 2015 will pan out.

Linking up to nina-marie, off the wall Friday

New Nunofelt Top Design

A couple of weeks ago a friend from my day job approached me and asked if I would make a top for her. We had a bit of chat about what colours she liked and what shape the top would have. She was clearly besotted with the dress I was wearing at the time:

This front panel of this dress is parfait dyed haboti silk. This became the basis of her top.

Instead of just having a panel of silk we thought it would be interesting to cover the entire top with silk so I set about dyeing a few metres of haboti in similar colours to the dress:

Then set about laying out the silk and wool over a template cut to Karin's measurements.

The wool colours were graduated from white at the top to chocolate brown at the bottom.

After lots of rolling, massaging and throwing, the wool started to contract and the silk puckered.

I added a few darts to help with the shaping, these photos were taken at the second fitting, I think it looks beautiful already but will add a couple more small darts around the collar.

I'm chuffed to bits with how this top has turned out. The silk has the most beautiful sheen (the photos really don't do it justice) that gives the top a luxurious look without being "in your face" bling. I'm already planning a purple version as a Christmas present to myself, and Karin has asked for another with a 3/4 length sleeve... I guess I will be a little busy for the next few weeks!

Wishing you all a wonderful, woolly Christmas and Happy New year!

Kittens Playing in the Twilight

Last weekend I started work on a long-sleeved top, Galina (aka Felicity) very helpfully suggested this site on the Felting and Fibre Forum as a possible solution to the "baggy armpit" problem I encountered with my jacket.

It looked like an interesting approach so I gave it a go.

laying out the first layer of roving over some dyed cotton scrim

Adding the sleeves

This was where it started to become challenging, although I had laid out the wool on the inside of the sleeve before laying it on the body, I had to carefully fold plastic between the layers of wool, cotton and resist to prevent the front of the sleeve felting to the back and closing the armholes.

Adding some prefelt kittens

The colour of the wool reminded me of the light you get at twilight so I added some playful kitten silhouettes. By adding the black trim along the bottom this longish top became a short dress but I think it looks great with a pair of black leggings and knee-high boots.

This is the wool I used, it contains a small amount of white tussah silk so the finished dress has a subtle sheen to it.

The new sleeve method didn't really work as planned; there were several holes where the sleeves joined the body when I first remove the resist. Not a big problem, a little bit of needle felting soon resolved that.

No matter how much I worked and fulled the armpits the arm holes were ENORMOUS. I had to resort to lots of tucks and darts to make the dress fit. It was a lot more work than I expected but I think it was worth it in the end and the colour is a delightful bluish purple.

All is not lost though, Nada posted another option for making sleeves on the forum, so that will keep me out of mischief over Crimbo :)

Woolly Shipment

My wool order finally arrived today, it should have been here on Wednesday but it appears the Interlink drivers aren't capable of following their sat navs. Interlink have a really nice system where you can watch your driver going from drop to drop as it counts down to your delivery. For 2 days running I watched the driver come within 50 yards of my address only to click "cannot deliver / cannot locate address". Utterly exasperating!!! I can't help but wonder if he was behind schedule so couldn't be bothered to stop?

Anyway, here is my bag of woolly goodness :)

The large white bags are merino and corriedale top, most of which I plan to dye, above them are some commercial merino and silk blends, a bit of a novelty for me as I normally blend my own. The dark grey in the centre is Gotland, it always amazes me how heavy and dense Gotland is, this parcel is 500g, most of the others are only 200g but are a similar volume. 

I have already started to play with some of the merino/silk blends, I chose the purple-blue mix for starters:

And have been laying out over some cotton scrim I dyed yesterday:

I am trying out a new design for the sleeve attachments after making a jacket last week. If it doesn't work this top will go from being long-sleeved to a vest :)

This is the jacket, I love it and have worn it every day this week but feel there is a bit too much fabric in the armpits, while this allows great freedom of movement I think it looks a bit bulky when my arms are down, hence the experiment to find alternative designs.

Here are some more shots of the blue-green top this time on the mannequin so you can see the shape.

This fuzzy effect was created by needle-felting green merino through from the reverse side. I rather like it, it reminds me of lichen.

Linking up to nina-marie, off the wall Friday