Felting with silk fibres

Firstly thank you for your lovely comments of support on my last post - it does feel like a grim time but I'm trying to look for some good things in each day, and if you're actually looking for the positives I think you find them more easily.

As well as the situation with my mum's health over the last few weeks, I also had a committment to what was supposed to be a very successful craft fair, so I did push myself to make a good selection of things. I made a lot of felt incorporating dyed mulberry silk fibres and was really pleased with the way they showed up and shimmered against black or other deep colours:

I did this flat piece first to make into a notebook, and liked it so much I made a seamless bag too:


The photo at the start of this shows a shoulder bag I made - I chose the colours of silk in blues and purple to match the fairtrade ceramic button I'd bought earlier, a friend of mine was owed a bag as a present and chose this one when she saw it, so I was pleased it had gone to a good home!
I also used some more dyed silk hanky to make other notebook covers in different shades, as well as a bit more sari silk - that's always a bit difficult to felt in securely but the wispy silk fibres have been really enjoyable to work with and I'll try to think of even more ways to use them in the future.

Finished Notebook

Just a quick update on yesterday's post.
There are many ways people make notebooks, I use the whole piece of flat felt, trimmed to size, as a soft and flexible cover, and hand-cut pages from nice textured paper, then just bind with posh ribbon!

The pages can be replaced just by undoing the ribbon and re-threading it again with new ones. I always do the lining in a different contrasting colour.

They're nice to hold and I carry one of my oldest with me to make 'creative notes' or sometimes just shopping lists in!
As I commented earlier my friend uses a completely different technique to make a re-usable cover to fit hardbacked books you buy from stationery shops - she uses a template and resist to form flaps to tuck the cover into, something I've just never got around to trying. Sometimes best to stick with what you know and just admire other people's work!

Finally some bright and cheerful felt

I have been pretty low recently and it's taken me a long time to get out my wool, but today I had nearly a whole day at home so I tipped out my sackful of beautiful colours, opened my cupboard so that yet more bags of wool tops started falling out onto the floor (they're really crammed in and never fit properly) and had a good look through all my supplies.

I settled almost straight away on an extremely bright scarlet and cerise to make a notebook cover from, decorated with this recycled sari silk yarn.

It's very hard to capture the richness of the colours but it is such an intense red and the silk makes a fantastic contrast both in the cooler tones and the shimmery texture against the wool fibres.

It was good to be felting again and I had lots of ideas for new things to make, but have succeeded in getting almost everything out and spreading different colour combinations of wool and silk all over the place, so that most of downstairs looks messy again.

Holly Felt Notebook

A friend had asked me to make a present for his wife with some winter leaves on, since she had liked the autumn leaf bag he'd bought for her a few weeks ago. So I of course thought of holly, as you would. I'd saved these Christmas cards from previous years since I liked the design, and so used them as my starting point, minus mice!

Being quite brave and foolish I had a go at cutting holly leaves out of pre-felt and tried wet-felting them onto a background. I never really thought it would work since wet-felting blends all the edges so much, but you never quite know until you try - I thought I might end up with some spiky bits of leaf left, but all I ended up with was oval shapes with fuzzy edges, should have known better really.
So I made another wet-felted flat piece, let it dry, and needle-felted my design onto it. I've not done this before, I've just done 3D birds and a cat, I broke 4 needles (definitely more practise needed) but in the end I was happy with the way it looked. Here is the reverse where you can see all the coloured fibres having been poked through by the needle - when I was finished I lightly wet-felted both sides of the design just to blend everything together.
With the red berries and ribbon to brighten it up I hope it'll be just right for a Christmas present.