I have to give credit to my husband for the pattern for this hat.  He first made one for himelf, then I made this one.  It is made of two sided, red and black felt.  It is cut of 4 identical pieces then hand stitched together.  Felt embroiders like a dream. 

I’ve had this batt of angora/merino in my stash for a couple of years now.  I had dyed the wool when I bought it, (chemical dyes) and meant to use it long ago.  Finally I pulled it out and made this sweet baby rug.  It is sooooo soft.  I put a piece of cotton gauze in the middle to add strength and keep to keep the piece light weight.  The design is inspired by Ottoman Turkish art of the 16th century.

This cute little basket is actually the baby version of a bigger one that sold before I could take a picture of it.  Fortunately I sold it to a friend, so maybe I can get a good picture of her with her with her basket in her garb.  This basket is made of natural colored Icelandic wool, grown on a small farm less than 100 miles from me.

I was thinking awhile back about my style of bag making and where it comes from.  Most of the bags I make are the envelope style, and in essence they are felt emulating a fabric form.  When I’m making felt with historic re-creation in mind, most of these smaller accessory pieces are conjecture.  I may have an example of a bag in a painting, but it does not tell me what the bag is made of or how it was made.  Since felt is so moldable I find it interesting that I sometimes think of my work in terms of other mediums, felt in the form that fabric or pottery would normally take.  In this case, its felt in the shape of a basket.  What strikes me about this kind of 3D felt vessel is that it is much more true to the nature of felt and how it wants to behave.  To me this form feels less like felt trying to be something else, and more like felt being and doing what felt does best.

Again this is made of pre-felt.  With these flowers I found a pattern in a Dover book and copied it almost directly.  Like the Scythian saddle pad, I blew up the image to the right size and cut each shape out and used it for a template for each piece. 

Here’s how it looked in the middle of the felting process.

First lets note that it is almost impossible to take a picture of the full image on a ball.  Balls just look better in person.

This design is the heraldry of my local barony, Cynnabar.

Again I’m using the prefelt technique.   However there is a small bit of needle felting here.   The only time I use it is when making balls, and then it is only used to tack the design to the ball until it can be more properly wet felted.

turkish tulip rug

This design is another example of the prefelt technique, except this time all the pieces were cut free hand, instead of by a pattern.  There are no examples of Ottoman felt from the 16TH century, so my inspirations are coming from other textiles and pottery such as these period examples.  The first is silk and housed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the plate is at the Smithsonian’s Freer Sackler.

I am so excited to announce that I will be merchanting at Baron Wars on May 8th!  Baron Wars is an SCA event held at a War of 1812 fort in Perrysburg Ohio.  Considering there were only Native Americans living in this area before the year 1600, it can be hard to find a site with good ambiance for a medieval event.  However this fort is made of timber (kind of like a big log cabin).  Its rustic feel is the perfect backdrop to the beginning of our camping season. 

For those of you coming to the event, I will be teaching felting in small groups at my merchant booth all day.  So if you would like a lesson please contact me to reserve a time and space!

For more information on Baron Wars:

http://www.marcheofthemarshes.org/baronwars.htm

I love it when customers give me artistic license.  He just said put some of that swirly stuff on it you like to do.  Cool!  I really do like doing spiral work.  Its very relaxing.  I love the process of joining one spiral to another.  Spiral designs work very well with felt because they are so organic and if they slide a bit during the felting process they still look like a spiral.   The hat was a bit tricky because it is made around a flat resist with a front and a backside.  I have pretty good spacial relations, but it was hard to visualize how the pattern wrapped around the other side.  It was hurting my brain.  Finally I looked at if from above so I could see both sides at once, and it all made sense then.

I made this batch of balls for my nephew last year.  I’ve made so many of these fun little things.  The wool is wound tightly into a ball, a design is lightly needle felted on, then I tie the balls in nylon stocking and throw them in the washing machine.  They come out fuzzy and egg shaped, but I simply roll them into a round shape and trim off the fuzz.

I made this basket for my mom for Christmas last year.  Its made the same way as my flat bags, by wrapping around a cardboard resist.  This resist was oval shaped, then when I cut it open I cut two ovals off the upper corners to form the handle.  Then in the last stage of fulling I simply molded it into the shape I wanted it to be in and left it to dry.  Since wool is hair it wants to stay in the shape it dries in.  (Remember using sponge curlers in your hair ladies?)