Felted Angels

I'm going along to a felting class this term which is held at a local school. I really enjoy the class, the tutor Annie is so welcoming and encouraging and has shown us the basics of wet felting over the past weeks. The other students in the group are also so friendly and love to share ideas and bring in things that they have made at home, and I really look forward to the class. Over the weeks we have covered how to make basic felt, have made flowers, made nuno felt and cobweb felt, felted stones and this last week started to make angels - for christmas decorations.

The angels are so cute and really quite easy to make with basic sewing skills, and can be made very individual with different decoration. We each made an A4 sized basic natural coloured felt with some added angelina fibres to add a bit of sparkle. Then a cone shape was cut to make the body and joined at the back with a row of running stitches. A head and arms were made and a triangle of felt cut for the wings. Then the angel can be decorated with buttons and stitching.

Making the felt

This is what we were aiming for 

Concentration!

J adding hair

Hopefully everyone will bring their angels back to the class next week so we can see the finished family of angels!

Update: a photo of the Angels - and even a Father Christmas! All so different!!

Walking the dog

Yesterday was such a lovely day. It was a crisp autumn day and I had a great walk with our cocker spaniel. The lanes near our house are full of autumn goodness. The trees have turned colour, but many have now dropped their leaves due to a heavy frost a couple of nights before. There are sloes (now ready to pick after the frost), rose hips and other berries giving a splash of red and lots of acorns which have dropped or been blown from the trees. There was also a fantastic mossy wall that I hadn't noticed before, it looked as it it had been felted!

I love this mossy wall! 

We really enjoyed our walk

Pine cones

I had quite a lot of brown merino tops left over from making the oak leaves for our nieces wedding and was wondering what I could make with it. With Christmas creeping up, I thought I would make some new christmas decorations and decided to try and make some pine cones. I had already made several sheets of brown felt, so I cut out different sized rounds of felt in a sort of petal shape, so I could slip them over a brown pipe cleaner to get the graduated shape of a pine cone.  After several iterations, I decided to add a second layer of felt on each round to try and make the shape a little better. The cones were ok but not very festive looking so some decoration was needed! I made some new sheets of felt in different shades, adding in a little decoration on some and used these as the second round.


Felt drying in the autumn sun.

Pine cones (sorry bit of a fuzzy photo).

So now we have a couple of wooly pine cones, and a few more to come when I get time!

My first post and wedding bows!

Wow, it has taken me a long time to get to this point. I have been thinking about making a blog for a while, just to keep a record of things that happen as a family, things that I do and things that I make.

So, my first post is about a family wedding. Recently my niece H was married to S. We all had a fantastic day, it was a bright sunny day with a lovely blue sky - just the day for an autumn wedding. Autumn was the theme that pulled the wedding together, and I was delighted to be asked to make the bows for the Church pews.

I decided to use my new felting skills and make oak leaves and acorns as the centre to the bows. I dry felted the acorns, which took a while as I had quite a few to make! I then had various goes at making the oak leaves, trying to get the felt colours looking autumnal.

The bows themselves were made up of several layers, at the back ivory tulle, then cream coloured hessian material, followed by a red wired edge organza ribbon that matched the bridesmaid dresses.  I used the oak leaves and acorns in the centre for half the bows and ears of wheat for the others.

Such a lovely day was had by all.