Felting!

I have produced several small pieces of felt today. They will form the backgrounds for some of my embroidered brooches and other pieces of jewellery.  They are quite flimsy, which is fine since they are always 'stabilised' by stitching to a base fabric before embroidery. The idea is to provide a unique, handcrafted background.

I thought I would show you these two pieces. Both produced using wonderful fibres from My Heart Exposed Yarns. Both use similar basic colours. The first piece has a 'double skyline'. Small backgrounds can be cut taking advantage of both. If larger pieces take one skyline and all the 'foreground' I shall have 'spare sky' for applique designs - nothing is ever wasted - far too precious! This first piece was quite successful and will probably be used for landscape designs. I have unintentionally allowed the brown fibres in the top layer to 'clump' together a little too much in the felting process, but the backgrounds can be cut to take advantage of these.

This second piece almost sent me skipping round the kitchen with excitement (well fortunately no one else was in and yes I am a big kid - the whole point of hand crafting is to experience, and for me, to share, this sort of 'buzz'). I had wanted a depth of coloured layers, with some fibres peeping through the top layer. When used in very small pieces as backgrounds this gives the appearance of meadow, hay field etc for my embroideries. I have managed one or two pieces like this before. The camera hasn't quite picked it up but the point is that a very fine scattering of short, quite coarse fibres, is dispersed across the final layer of fibres. These short fibres are in a rich blend of Helen's beautiful colours and they have had more affinity for the background than for each other so that they have not 'clumped together' like the browns in the first piece, but have felted to the background layers beautifully.

The flash coupled with the fact that the felt was supported by a piece of perspex in the light tent has caused the colours to appear  quite washed out here. In reality, against a dark background, they are beautifully rich. I now need to try to identify the type of this fibre so that I can talk to Helen about some more!