Lisa's Felted Art: ~ Discovering the World of Felting ~

I've decided to try my hand at blogging so I can share my new found passion...felting.

Over the 2012 Thanksgiving holiday, I attended the Christmas Craft Fair in Grass Valley when a certain artist's booth caught my eye...beautifully made scarves, shawls, wrist warmers and hats. The material was so soft and the colors and designs were beautiful, like works of art. I had never seen anything like it before. I love going to craft and art fairs to get ideas for things I could make. So, as soon as I got home, I began searching the Internet to discover how these beautiful scarves and shawls had been made. I discovered it was the art of felting. There is both needle felting, which is done using a single needle or a multiple needle tool, and wet-felting, which is a process that uses hot soapy water to bind layers of wool roving pieces together to make felt.

I find it amazing how so many beautiful things can be created all starting with dyed wool roving...

After watching numerous YouTube videos on felting, I decided to make hand-felted soaps for my first felting project.

So, off to HeartStrings Yarn Studio I went, where I purchased some wool and felting supplies. It's a nice little shop and they were very helpful in getting me started. The Yarn Basket is another nice place nearby to shop for felting supplies.

Here are my hand-felted soaps...

Harvest Festival scented soaps

Lavender scented soaps

Sweet Licorice and Wild Rose scented soaps

They packaged up nicely for Christmas presents...

Next, I decided to try needle felting, utilizing a single felting needle and a foam block. I love how I started with a piece of wool and by using a felting needle to repeatedly poke the wool, the wool started to take shape...and before not too long it became an angel.

Angel

I especially love my next two needle felting projects...a boy and girl bunny. It was fun thinking about and creating bunnies with character...

Benjamin-Bunny

Kari-Bunny

While bringing in the new year on vacation in Mendocino, I visited the Mendocino Yarn Shop looking for some nice roving to make some scarves. There was so much to choose from, but I narrowed it down to some beautiful 100% Blueface Leicester Top wool roving with a medium shade teal green to purple colorway (range of color) and a darker purple, blue and red colorway. I also found some superfine hand-dyed Merino wool with a peacock colorway.

My first wet-felting project was a cobweb scarf, which is made by taking a length of wool roving and gradually pulling the roving from the center to form the width of the scarf. The felting is accomplished by a process using a combination of hot soapy water and friction. In the future, I plan to post a demonstration video of one of my wet-felting projects.

Wet-felted cobweb scarf using 100% Blueface Leicester Top roving with a Big Sky colorway

Wet-felted cobweb scarf

The next scarf was also done using the wet-felting process, but it was made by pulling off small thin pieces of the wool roving and laying them in several rows to make the bottom layer of the scarf. Then a second layer of small pieces of wool was added on top with the pieces going crosswise (or perpendicular) to the bottom layer. I then added various pieces of wool to make a design, which turned out to remind me of peacock feathers.

Two layers of wool and design, getting ready to begin the wet-felting process

Apply hot soapy water and gently rub to felt the wool together

Scarf laying out to dry

Peacock feather-inspired scarf

Close-up of design

Wet-felted scarf

And then, after an inspiration from my son, Ben, I designed my next scarf based on the famous Water Lilies painting by Claude Monet.

Water Lilies by Claude Monet

Monet-inspired scarf

The first two layers were the background and foundation.

First step of wet-felted Water Lilies scarf

The third layer was the design incorporating the water lilies.

Adding the water lilies design

Part of the wet-felting process includes wadding the piece of felt (scarf) into a ball and repeatedly throwing it on the table. Good therapy for working out frustration. Ha!