Category Archives: felting

plotting, planning, and practicing

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go to flickr for notes on this photo.
plotting and planning

or go to the pittsburgh craft collective blog if you want links to the project pages.

here’s what we have tentatively planned for fiber arts camp, thanks to all of you who helped me with your fabulous ideas!

felting
beads and snakes

i’m not very good at felting, but it’s fun! my snake wiggled free one of his pipe cleaners and you can see the pipe cleaner under his chin. i fully expect the kids to be better at this than i am.  the front bead is made of yarn, the others are made of roving.  does anyone know if these really need hot water poured over them?  they seem pretty felted to me…

spinning
with the hooks you see in the top
supplies

adina already has planned some weaving – bags or little cardboard loomed pieces and i picked up some yogurt containers that can be used to weave in and out of to make little baskets. to which i might like to add some paper weaving we’ll see.  we’re also planning lots of knitting, needle felting, sun printing, and tie dye.

snakey face

sounds like we have plenty of stuff!  now we just need to organize ourselves :)  i’m hoping for good weather so we can do lots of this outside.

feltable

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first of all, thanks so much for your opinions on the hat! they were very helpful. i think i may try the border, then if i don’t like it rip it. i’m assuming in doing this that the asymmetry will still be bold enough (blue compared to orange).

on the line

one morning this week, i finally decided to try felting the stack of stuff i had piled in the yarn room. so into the washer on hot with a bit of soap went 3 moth eaten cashmere sweaters that a kind woman dropped at my doorstep last week, two fronts to a cardigan (the rest of which was ripped for yarn recycling, but these didn’t work – i also used them to exhaust a dye bath), and one little knitted swatch for my friend peggy (not shown).

overall, it went well. these were the fastest to felt and left lots of blue bits on everything else (witness the cashmere sweaters below). they were easily done in one wash cycle.
really felted

the three cashmere sweaters were a bit different. the red one might not have felted at all (superwash cashmere?), the tan one felted up like crazy and i didn’t take it out so it felted more and more, and the black one needed the two wash cycles, as did peggy’s felted sample.

felted cashmere

as someone who has never felted before, it was really interesting to watch everything felt at a different rate. so, what do i plan to do with these? i think the cashmere that felted may be cut into pieces to stitch at the forehead sections if people find hats itchy. the blue pocket cardi fronts i’m pondering some sort of wall hanging to hold my circular needles for one of them. the red cashmere sweater? i’m not sure. anyone have a use for it?