Small Xmas project II: Felt ornament/Weihnachtsprojekt II: Filzhänger

What can you do with some scraps of white felt, bits of ribbons and lace? Well, a Christmas ornament, of course!

The felt I used for this was quite a sturdy one, actually a piece of a table placemat, and so it will hang nicely, no backing needed.

A little bit of ribbon and some handstitching, and it could turn out like this:



For the decoration of the second one I used different bits of lace and sewed them down with free motion machine stitches - but of course you could do it all by hand as well:



I guess there are endless ways of using tablemat felt in various colours for making ornaments - maybe also in combination with paper (what about photos?) or fabric ... could be adapted for a kids' project as well, I think!

(German summary: Ein Stück festen Filz - hier von Tischsets - und Reste von Borten, Bänder und Spitze - und Simsalabim! - hat man einen Christbaumschmuck!)

New year - new projects/Neues Jahr - neue Projekte

Ooops, and again this year is running along much faster than I thought it would ...

As I've had problems with my internet connection lately, I started the year concentrating on cleaning up and sorting out my work-space/studio - a never-ending job it seems, as I gladly allow myself to drift off the cleaning and instead start arranging the freshly found objects into some new projects ...

Anyway, I've come to the conclusion that I have a lot of interesting stuff there in my stash and really should dig into this before considering any further shopping adventures - does that sound familiar to you ;-)?

But of course there must be exceptions, like for haberdashery or bargain leavings and leftovers ... :-)

On Etsy, I recently found a bag of coloured fulled/felted cloth scraps for sale and thought they would be nice to combine with some wool thread embroidery on felt. Actually, I've planned to use them together with pieces of old sweaters, felted in the washing machine - and maybe some embellished/punched wool as well.

So I started with a small project - it's a cover for a wheat&lavender cushion - the type you heat up in the microwave or in the owen for comforting warmth.



About a fortnight ago, Elizabeth/Landanna wrote about her needlebooks and how dear they are to her. Her description of them was so inspiring, that I suddenly felt the urge to possess a needlebook, too ...

All materials were already there in my stash - I just had to put them together!



And while working on the cushion cover, I've simultaneously started stitching on another little needlebook, using the same materials as for the cushion ...

Guess the cleaning-up has to be postponed again!

(German summary: Beim Aufräumen fallen mir immer wieder interessante Materialien aus dem 'Fundus' zu - und ich lasse mich gerne ablenken! 'Nadelbrief' hat für mich so altmodisch und verstaubt geklungen, bis ich das Posting von Elizabeth/Landanna gelesen habe - und mir auch ganz dringend eines machen mußte ...! Der Wärmekissenbezug ist aus Walkstoffresten auf Filz - da kommen noch ein paar Stickereien hinzu.)

A felted hair ribbon - and some embroidery books/Gefilztes Haarband und Bücher

This is a felted hair ribbon which I really needed to do, as my old, red one almost was falling apart from everyday's wear.

I used strips of a green, woolen sweater and punched it with some prefelt, yarn, threads and fabric and finally sew on a couple of beads.

These are some embroidery books I bought in Sweden -



with various aspects of embroidery -

the second picture f.e. is out of the book "Tenntrådsbroderier" ('Tin thread embroidery') by Mona Callenberg, which is a North Scandinavian/Sami technique where spun tin thread is plaited and embroidered on reindeer leather, mostly for jewelry, but also on purses, bags and clothing.

What I find to be quite amusing is the third picture, out of "Med egna stygn" by Lena Lundgren, which shows the traditional wool work, here used with illustrations from childrens' books and comics. This is a modern book on embroidery, inspiring the reader to do all sorts of own experiments with thread on unconventional materials.

The first picture, out of "Yllebroderier" by Ingrid Eggimann-Jonsson, is wool work on wool felt, this one showing mainly corner motifs to build up a composition. The book is filled with colourful photos and sketches on floral and folkloristic Swedish wool work, all designed by the author.

And the last picture is out of the book "Sömmar & stygn" by Anita Gunnars, a very clear and fresh stitch collection, here showing an old Swedish stitch from the early 19th century called "Anundsjösöm".



I'm still a bit stuck in everyday matters at the moment and therefore not so productive on textiles right now - have a look at Paula's blog: she describes exactly what I mean - I just wanted to say that I still very much enjoy your hanging around and commenting!

(German summary: Ein mit dem Embellisher gefilztes Haarband - Wolle, Garne, Stoff auf Strickstoff gepuncht - und einige Stickbücher, die ich aus Schweden mitgebracht habe - meist Wollstickerei, aber auch eines über Zinnstickerei, eine alte nordskandinavische/lappländische Technik, wo der gesponnene Zinnfaden kunstvoll geflochten und danach auf Rentierleder aufgenäht/gestickt wird. Das dritte Bild zeigt Kinderbuchillustrationen/Comics in herkömmlicher Wollstickereitechnik, nett, oder? - Und obwohl ich im Moment für textiles Arbeiten nur schwer Zeit und Muße finde, schätze ich meine kleine Leserschaft sehr ...)

What if - there was a face coming out of the dark ...

This is a very dark face - yet sparkling. I wanted it to "come out" of the darkness, like an illusion or imagination, a dream, a hallucination ... (hey, it's halloween, isn't it?)

Anyway, I used a gold-lurex fabric, punched it with dark red wool from the backside, put a thin layer of light pink, a little rosé, dark brown, greyish brown ... from the right side, in order to kind of "model" the face with its contours, then added some layers of black and dark red for the shadows behind . I punched it all several times from the back and the front and finally squeezed the piece with luke warm water and damp ironed it. It's approx. 11x17" (27x42 cm).

Remember the what-if pre-felt?

Do you remember the what-if pre-felt on linen I started last week? Well, today I proceeded punching small scraps onto it, then filling in on the gaps with a funny, multicoloured yarn I discovered on my trip to Vienna this weekend. Finally, I made some stitches with a red velvet ribbon I found in my stash.

Stone hanging - one of my big projects

Today I had too much to do with my kids, household and other mundane matters - I'll be off for Vienna for the weekend as well - but instead I'll show you one of my finished big projects, decorating my kitchen/livingroom. It's an embellished wall hanging, almost 120 x 60 cm, punched grey wool in different shades and qualities, rough sackcloth, brown lace, some raw and fine silk fibers, natural linen fibers, woolen handspun yarn.

Going back to my Swedish roots, I enjoy working with wool and felt in a kind of Viking manner, combining the archaic natural wool with the image of stone, often using old Nordic mythological symbols, signs, runes.

Spiral felt beads - from the leftovers

Meanwhile, I played around with some narrow leftover straps of the chopped-up sweaters; curled them up, pinned them together, made some stitches - and voilá! I had some funny spiral felt beads in my hand!

Recycling and Whatiffing a slipover ...

I'm still struggling around with this slipover, which doesn't behave as I want it to.

I started out with different pieces of knitwear (old sweaters and some UFOs), shrunk them in the washing-machine, cut them up and stitched them together, quite randomly, with bold handstitches and then punched it with the embellisher.

Unfortunately, some material flattened out more than I'd foreseen under the embellisher and I tried to shrink it once more. Some of the seems broke up after this procedure - I guess as a result of me using the thicker, coarser felting needles for this project, as these knitted and felted layers can partially be very thick and I wanted to avoid massive needle breakage. Anyway, these sturdy needles seem to kind of "chew" the thread I used for the seams.

So I'll get back to this project as soon as I've figured out how to solve the mess!