Shades of Red Purple Blue

PIXIE BEANIES - RED PURPLE BLUE

Getting ready for Felt United......International day of Felt 1 October 2011

SHADES OF RED

 SHADES OF PURPLE

SHADES OF BLUE

Felted Beanies

Winter is here and I have decided to take time out from the Gum Tree Garden Studio for  a little while.   The wet cold weather provides the perfect opportunity to do some felting and replenish my supply of hats, beanies and scarves.


I love wearing these popular Pixie beanies and have 2 more orders to fill.

Pixie beanie ready for shaping

After shaping  SOLD

Pixie beanie shaped and worn with folds pushed down. 
It can also be worn with folds pulled out as shown in images above.

Damson Felt Hat Changes Personality

My friends came over and asked what do I mean the hat can change personality......... so I let them try on a few angles for fun. They were a little shy in posing for the blog so the hat had to go back on the stand.

Option 1 with the band doubling as a scarf is shown in the previous post.

Here are three more options for that unique personality or changing mood.
I see option 1. and 2. as the best for my long face, but I liked the other options on my friends.  Which option is your favourite?

Option 2 (below):
Here the Crazy Felt band is wrapped around twice and the ends tied to form a stylised flower.

Option 3 (below):  The curled brim is worn at the front for an open face look.



 

  

Option 4 (below):

This is option 2 with the front brim turned up for a totally different look.

 

Damson - Felted Merino Cross Hat with Crazy Felt Band

The right side was dragged up and curled and the front left was tipped forward. 


It was time to try something new. I had a huge template/resist that was given to me by Robert a felt artist from Brisbane during one of our "Felting Frivolities" camping retreats at the historical Jondaryan Woolshed.  Robert makes hats  and costumes that tend to be "out of the box" and I always look forward to seeing his creations at our 6 monthly camps.

Robert modelling his felted ladies hat and vest with style

Wearing one of Robert's out of the box creations with wild abandon

 I hadn't used his template before.....not being sure of how I could adapt the finished hat...fearing there would be just too much "stuff" on top..... until I saw Andrea Graham using the same template/resist on her blog just recently and decided to give it ago.  I had just bought some hand dyed Merino cross tops from Pat Miller's online store "Highland Felting" in Vic.

The Damson was a lovely blend of multiple colours and I decided to combine this with Wineberry.

I have used cross bred wool in the past ..usually washing and carding the fleeces myself  before making into a mat, or slippers.  When felted it was thick but very soft to the touch and felt like a folded blanket under my bare feet.  But I had not tried Pat's Merino Cross before.... it was coarser and felted very quickly, grabbing aggressively to the netting on top in the initial stages. 

Not much was needed to get a good felt thickness.  Two thin layers seemed to be the equivalent of  four fine pure merino layers that I use in most of my hats.  It was a pleasure to be able to make a hat so quickly...especially after the labour intensive cobweb scarves.  This wool will make a great tote bag....something I need as soon as possible. 

Note the size of the resist and the final size of the felted hat ready for blocking

My hat needed a band .....A band using felted merino and novelty yarns sewn in a crazy pattern could be fun.   Jeannette Knake in her book   Crazy Felt   uses water soluble stabiliser and spray fixative to hold her yarn and fabric pattern in place while it is free sewn.

Being an incurable  recycler I had to find something around the house that would serve the same purpose.  As the band for the hat was narrow I considered using toilet paper held in place with scraps of masking tape....(scraps of masking tape can be found all round my studio, stuck to my painting easle and on nearby cupboards ready to affix pastel papers to my sketching board when painting portraits.)  The toilet paper would eventually disintegrate during the final felting process....maybe.  I had used this before without felting and remember spending copious amounts of time picking little pieces of paper out of my work.


Crazy Felt hat band partially felted ready for sewing

I finally decided to try just a thin film of tops and scatter a yarn pattern over the surface....then felt it to a stage that I could do some free machining.  It worked very well and I had no trouble with stabilising the material.  I then put the band in a dish of very hot water and agitated and worked it until it was fulled.  The result was not unlike the yarn scarves that I have made. 


Now for a hat with some attitude! The hat crown was pushed down on the right side and the brim dragged up the same side and curled.  The left front was flipped forward to create that .....attitude.  The left side wore the knot of the band and draped down and around the neck.  The crazy felt band could also be doubled around the hat  and the ends pulled into a crazy felt flower.  It was a very comfortable hat to wear and it's personality could be easily changed by wearing it at different  angles.    Can't wait to try some more...perhaps with even more height to push into strange shapes.....great fun!

Shiraz - Felted Merino Hat

Even though this little hat was on my blog slide show it needed "tweaking" before selling. I had it at the Jondaryan Festival just as a display piece when a lady fell in love with it and wanted to buy it there and then.  Of course I wasn't able to until it was finished and gave her my blog address should she still want to buy.  She contacted me two weeks later and spurred me on to get it finished. 

My little Shiraz hat will soon be going to a new home. This one is hard to let go as it is one of the few hats that I could actually wear without looking strange.  Oh well,  I will just have to make another one with the same template and hope it looks as good. 

Well, here it is "tweaked".  I used  merino tops and laminate with dark red organza.  Black felt pieces embellished with silk waste were inserted  randomly and the brim area received a sprinkling of mohair curls in pink tones.  This created an interesting texture that was hard to see in the original photos.  So ..to pick up the texture in the new shots I followed the sun around the house and actually got the best light on top of the washing machine.  You should be able to see the organza bubbling through in some areas.

Sapphire Hat

Well, I am gradually finding my way around and ....Joei...I have attached the "Followers" gadget you suggested ...thanks.

I must confess the profile image is a "wee" bit younger than I really am. One day I'll find an image where I am in front of the camera lens instead of behind taking all the shots. But still it is me......


I have received an email from a very concerned friend letting me know that my images are vanishing. Yep! there seems to be about 4 missing...including the first image of the Sapphire hat.  I searched the Blogger and Google forums and it appears that this is common.  Not to worry I'll be uploading most of these wayward images when answering past questions from friends ......about how each was made and what I would do differently next time. 

I made the Sapphire hat a couple of years ago and sold it last year to fellow felter ....Georgie from Brisbane...who wore it to her Melbourne Cup lunch last year.  She then passed it on to her friend who... quote "wears it everywhere".  It was fun to make and I learnt a lot from the process. 

At the time that I made this I had not been to any workshops (still haven't) or had any felting books, so much was trial and error ....adapting the basic techniques picked up at our local Spinners and Weavers group.

 I started with 2 fine layers of  purple merino tops for the base then placed small round pieces of bubble wrap at various points along the felt strip.  The top layers of felt were placed at an angles to create a scalloped effect when felted...(as felt shrinks the way it is laid).  I used different tones ...some roughly blended by hand ...some plain.

Slits were cut at an angle to complement the scallop effect while the felt was wet...then rubbed to open up the lace.  Petals were extended by attaching the unfelted end to the petal flaps.

What I would do differently

When using this process in the future I would reinforce the the area under the small bubble wrap resist e.g merino tops, a scrap of felt or material for a nuno effect...as it was very thin.  The second change would be to use a firmer resist like lino to avoid the risk of cutting in the wrong place.  In the left image you will see how uneven and fragile the flowers were when opened.  Third, I would use another angled layer of wool before the final decorative layer to strengthen the petals when opened.   The image below shows some flowers that opened up a little better than the one above.

The work I do now is much more stable and I  have some wonderful books that allow my imagination fly.

...Happy felting

Felting Fabrications

To day is the day I submit to the request to start a blog. For those who have asked "What else do you make?" and "Do you have a blog?"....here it is......
Most images of the felted pieces here have been retrieved from the deep recesses of my antiquated computer. Other pieces have been pulled out of boxes and dusted off for uploading.

Many of the felted hats and felted vessels are what I call my "Pudding Bowl" creations as most were stretched and blocked on an old fashioned pudding bowl just as our Grandmothers may have done. Many pieces used recycled materials to create wearable art.

Over time I hope to post step by step images of how some of the pieces were made as well as stages of my current work.

So here is my visual introduction to blog ....enjoy