Sunday, November 22, 2009

Felting Class

My mom is in town visiting and I thought it would be fun to plan out some activities for just us. So I signed us up for a Felting class at the local art center. It was called Felting: From Fuzz to Form and it covered needle felting, wet felting and ideas on how to combine them with things like felted sweaters material too. I'd never done any of these and it was a nice change from all the knitting I've been up to!

First we did needle felting. It's just stabbing over and over some wool roving with a barbed needle until it submits to your will. Or turns into something like a cupcake. ;)
Here is my little project:


I also made these little circle shapes, not sure what they will become yet...


Next was wet felting. Just dip clouds of roving into warm/hot soapy water and turn into a ball. Or something. I was most excited for this part but it was NOT a good fit for me. My first attempt wasn't turning into a ball, it ended up more flat. Actually it looked like a T-bone steak! Or a human heart. But DEFINITELY not a ball.



Next I tried wet-felting a snake. Much better!


My mom had much better success with felting balls but she managed to forget all of her projects back at class! The only piece that actually came back with us was this embellished felted sweater piece. The orange and turquoise bits were needle-felted on. Quite cute!

2 comments:

  1. My Mom and I tried felting, we wanted that smooth bumpy texture... we could only get that loose hairy texture?! How did you get the pink so smooth?

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  2. Jodi - which pink do you mean? The more you felt the wool the tighter and denser it got. The tiny cupcake was needle felted and really small and dense. The more you stuck it with the needle the smoother it got. The pink piece at the end was a felted sweater. The original sweater texture really determines the final texture. If it's knit at a small gauge the felted result is really smooth. Hope that helps!

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