Wet Felted Vase Makeover

Sometimes things don’t always turn out the way you imagine they would.  Every time I wet felt something, I hope for the best.  Everything I make at the moment is an experiment, as it is still new to me.  I am learning the language of wool.  The example below is not one of my finest efforts.

I used  natural Merino batt with skeleton leaves.  It took ages to get the shape correct.  Although the vase is well felted, it is a bit blah!  Actually, it is more than a bit blah.  So, I looked at it for weeks and before I was ready to throw it out, I had an idea.  You know how I hate to waste anything.  I had to find a way to make the vase better or find another use for it.

I used my embellisher to make some fabric with leftover wool and cut out leaf shapes.  I hand stitched the leaves onto the vase and viola!  I have a new vase for my fake plant.   It isn’t perfect, but at least it is no longer blah!

Wet Felted Vessel With Applique

Here is my latest vessel.  I am starting a new contract, so I will only be able to felt on the weekends!  It is approximately 6h x 7w inches.

I used the embellishing machine to make some fabric.  I embellished different shades of pink and purple wool, with sari silk fibers and sari silk ribbon onto a piece of Merino Prefelt.  The silk gives the fabric a nice sheen.  I also added some Angelina fibers for a bit of sparkle.  I then used the sewing machine to sort of make some round flower shapes.  I have to admit that it was tough going without a backing fabric on the piece, but I wanted to use the fabric as an applique, as I did with the iris vessel.  I lost the will to live with trying to sew the whole piece of fabric, which is a good thing as I have an idea for another bowl.

I decided to make the design on the inside of the bowl, which would ultimately become the outside.  I thought that wouldn’t disturb the applique too much.  In any event, some parts of the applique didn’t felt completely to the vessel, but as it is all a learning curve, that was ok.  It may have had something to do with the stitching.  The wool and silk felted nicely in any event.  I embroidered a running stitch around each piece of applique and stitched a few beads on each piece too.  I was going for an abstract flower design.  The felt is nice and thick and I am happy with how sturdy it is.

On another note, I went my first meeting of the East Sussex Guild of Weavers, Spinners and Dyers this weekend.  They meet once a month on a Saturday.  It was suggested I go by two people I met and I finally decided to do it.  I have to say that there is a combined wealth of information to be had here.  Although I don’t weave or spin, I am interested in dying and carding wool.  I met some really lovely ladies.  Although we are not supposed to bring work to sell, some people had bits of carded wool and books for sale.  I restrained myself from purchasing anything other than dye.  There was a guest speaker who talked about her life in dyeing and she had product for sale.  There were some bargains to be had.  If I had known about the dyeing class on Sunday, I would have booked that.  Something to look forward to in the future.  There is an exhibition at the end of the month over two days that I am looking forward to going to.  It could be an opportunity to show my work one day. 🙂

Wet Felted Iris Vessel

I have been making my vessels two at a time in order to save a little bit of time.  Otherwise I would be at it all day!  I originally wanted to make a blue iris, but I didn’t have any blue prefelt, nor the time to make any.  So, I Googled yellow irises and sure enough, there are yellow irises.  I drew and cut out 3 basic shapes on the prefelt as my decoration.  Yellow and purple are opposites on the color wheel and I knew that would make the yellow really pop.  I have some lovely lavender Merino batt that I used as a base and used the prefelt as decoration with some Corriedale as the stem.  I hadn’t used prefelt in wet felting before and I was happy with the result and how it felted.  I shall probably use it more often.

Once the vessel was completely dry, I needle felted some extra wool on the flower for definition and decoration and then wet felted it again.  I knocked out the wrinkles to make it really smooth.   I wasn’t going for a realistic flower.  I just wanted people to know what it was.  Looking at it now, I might add some more wool to the flower to give it more definition near the stem, otherwise I am really happy with how it turned out! 🙂

Here it is now with a bit more contrast needle felted to the flower.

It’s subtle, but it does make a difference.