Forays into Felting

Inspired by my friend Margaret, who makes lovely felt, I got up this morning and decided to make some felt.

I wanted to make a piece with colours to represent air, that I could then embroider into, so I gathered some white, grey and pale blue wool and silk, and some white Angelina.

Using Jane Doe's felting tute from Craftster (http://www.craftster.org/forum/index.php?topic=56350.0), I worked onto a cut open carrier bag, then a big sheet of bubblewrap, and wrapped it up in one of my bamboo place mats.

I started with a full layer of white, then one of grey-blue, then a mixed layer of white, the silks, Angelina and blues, then I added more wool over the silk and Angelina to make sure they'd incorporate fully.

I felted away, to the musical accompaniments of Lost Prophets*, turning my work, until I had a good solid felt, probably about 10-15 minutes of rolling. Shocking the felt was fun - I wrapped it up in the place mat and whacked it on the staircase, then jumped on it on the floor.

I've now got a lovely piece of felt drying, ready to start stitching into.

Some things to bear in mind next time:
* the silk incorporated well by itself, so next time I'll try it without wool on top, as it has become somewhat buried.
* the kitchen worktop was a good height to work onto, but a bit slippery for rolling the placemat onto, so I laid it onto a cork surface protector, which did the job.
* it worked best when the placemat was rolled away from me, so that the roll stayed together.

Now, I'm going to do a few more. I want to try green, red and purple ones.

Wheeeeee!

* We Are Godzilla, You Are Japan ( http://youtu.be/oxxpm3agRfA) is awesome felting music!