Last Evening's Sunset

     This is a picture of the sunset last evening. I wish I could get felt to look like that .. those colors are so beautiful. I really must work more on that though. I saw a felted landscape recently that had the most beautiful stormy sky, so I know it is possible.




     I have begun working on a new bag idea. I'm still not convinced that the design isn't a bit too complicated for the medium, but I'm about to find out. I'll be wetting it out today, after I run a couple of small errands, then applying the design which I have cut out of red prefelt. 

     Here's a look at the bits a pieces that will be going into this. The bag will be black outside and red inside and have a lobster on the outside. The lobster has a lot of parts so we'll see what happens. I'm still going to have to needle felt some of the details at the end. 

If At First, You Don't Succeed .... Try, Try Again

    Not one to be defeated by my own stupid mistakes, I made three more cellphone cases yesterday. I am pleased with these. The dark brown one I made first. I was quite happy, except I didn't have quite enough white on the outside of the fringe of the flap. That was my error on layout. The grey one came next and even though the grey is a very coarse, long staple wool, it worked better than I expected. I was happier with the fringe. 


     I attempted the red wool again. As soon as I wet it, it tried to get away from me again. I have no idea what this wool is .. the staple is short and it's very fine and soft. I'd guess merino, but not sure. I was able to control the wool but you can see this one is a bit wider than the others. A tiny bit of the red solidified and didn't stick on the front so I snipped it off. Not sure what happened there either, except I think it might have folded off initially on the bottom side where I couldn't see it, during the beginning stages. I also dared to cut some holes in the flap with pleasing results. I found out these holes can get a lot larger in a big hurry where the wool is very thin. More valuable knowledge for the data base in my brain. 

     I was really happy with the flame look of the red flap. I don't know what kind of wool the yellow is either. It's a long staple a slightly coarser than the red. I got both at a fabulous price on EBay in large amounts. I imagine it is left overs from the International Day of Felt project quite some time ago as this was themed in red and yellow colors. In any case, it was inexpensive and I have a lot of it. 

     This is the sketch I have ready for my first handbag. I'm waiting on an order of four colors of dyed Corridale top from Louet in Quebec and a sampler of Angelina fibers from the states. Once those treasures arrive, I think I'm ready to dive into handbag production. The little cases were a great experience, but I just fell in love with the handbag concept and can't wait to try it. 

Learning Through Mistakes

     A new case for my Blackberry. If I'd had to grade this project, I'm afraid the mark would have been very disappointing. However, I again learned so much by making the errors. In the first place, this is not the design I was going for. I wanted a seamless case but not this ravioli edge. I know what happened though ... it totally got away from me as soon as I wet it. The reason for this was the material I used for my resist. I used two layers of bubble wrap, bubbles facing, and whip stitched them together. This flattened out the edge of the resist and when I wet it, I had a problem feeling where the edge was. Back to corrugated cardboard. I really worked at it to correct the grossly flattened out edge, but could see I couldn't save it. I didn't do too badly getting the edges straight, but this was disappointing. The second huge error was simply a matter of not paying attention. I got a bit carried away laying out the wool and mistakenly laid a double layer on the flap with no resist up there. I just wasn't thinking as I was getting excited about laying out the spots. 

    The spots are the slices from the bracelets that I had saved for this purpose. Then I laid a few barely there wisps of a long stapled yellow wool over the spots here and there. I lost a couple of spots during the felting process and had to pull one off at the end as it wasn't stuck very well. The best parts were that I made my resist the correct size for shrinkage and the phone fits in perfectly. The fringe turned out really well and I'm thrilled with it's final look. The whole piece is very firm and the flap is stiff as a board and protects the keys so what was a horrible mistake really worked out.  The color is kinda cool too.