Getting physical with wool

Hello. I had a smashing time at Hawkmoon Crafts, learning how to wet felt a picture. Sue was an excellent teacher, and we had a lot of fun. There were two others doing it, and guess what, they read my blog and picked up the link from there. That was a surprise. 

Sue's house is full of arts and crafts, most of it made by her and some she has collected from other crafters. We started with a piece of bubblewrap and laid out the base of our picture in white wool. We then chose the  background colours we wanted, and placed them on top, building up several layers. Then we had to decide on the detail we wanted in our picture. 

After coffee and cake we then started the wetting process. Warm soapy water is sprayed all over it, the bubblewrap is folded over to cover it, and then we rubbed it all over with a scrunched up carrier bag, pushing down hard as we did so. The idea is to get the fibres matted together. It gets quite physical as we rolled it up, first one way then the other, putting more pressure on it. We even threw it hard down on the table, just as you would with a piece of dough when bread making. My wrists started aching.

Eventually we ended up with our own hand made picture to take home.

This is mine. I plan to add some needle felting and stitching to it. If my flowers were white instead of orange, they would look like fried eggs, ha ha. It's surprising the difference between dry needle felting and wet felting. All the pummeling makes it shrink. and the picture ends up a lot more messy.

I think we all did ok. I'm glad I learnt how to do it, and it's nice that it was a social event as well.  It's given me a taste for it and I'll probably do some more.

I've got a job to do tomorrow. Helen has a big hutch that she wants converting from a detached bunny house to two separate flats, upstairs and downstairs, for two hedgies. I've had a look through my wood stash and picked several pieces out for the conversion.

Now I'm tired, so I'll sign off. Thanks for popping in, we'll catch up soon.
Toodle pip