Felt Purse – Take two

I said I would try again – and this time I changed the design slightly: instead of inserting the sides as separate panels as in the purple purse, I left the felt rectangle all in one piece  and cut it so that the sides are part of the back and are joined with the front (not sure whether this makes sense?) – therefore having just the one stitched edge. This gives it a rounder, softer shape and just feels more appropriate for the material.

 I used a magnetic clasp (hidden) and added a first selection of my latest bead treasure as an accent – the colours of the beads reflect perfectly the the colours of the inside…

  
(Zebra Felt Purse – Size: 20x15x5cm / 100% Wool with upcycled beads)

I am much happier with this result!

Going on a Bead hunt…

I spent the weekend with my oldest friend recently – having met nearly 40 (!) years ago we kept loosely in touch over the decades (saying something like that really sounds old…) and even – after leaving our home country –  ended both up in England! She is a very accomplished crafter – and I hope to get her permission at some time to display some of her work here. It was a very rainy Saturday and we decided to visit the local charity shops to see if we could find some treasures. And I did – I am so pleased with the beads I found:

    These will all eventually find their way into my felt jewellery…

And then we both spent the rest of the afternoon doing some sewing and felting respectively… This piece of double sided felt is going to be my next attempt at making a purse:

Lots more going on at the moment – I will update soon.

I took the weekend off…

…from felting, that is. However much I love it and however much I wish I could spend all my time playing around with bits of wool – sometimes other things need to take priority. And it’s not just that – inevitably I have a tendency to put myself under pressure and feel I need to produce something every weekend! And that is not necessarily a bad thing as I also have a tendency to drift if I don’t plan my time… But as I had spent the previous weekend felting on both days that also meant that nothing else got done! So – I ‘allowed’ myself to focus on other things and let myself off the hook. And it felt absolutely lovely! I had time to wander into town, go to the market, buy myself new shoes, read the newspaper and on Sunday even baked a cake (I used to bake cakes regularly, even felt I needed that to keep my sanity…:-)) Very relaxing…

This doesn’t mean I haven’t been near my felting stuff for the whole week though! Earlier in the week I sat down and put together another necklace from cut off felt pieces and upcycled beads – and am quite pleased with it. It is very chunky and certainly has a presence when worn:

        

But you now what? When I realised I had an hour or so to spare late on Sunday afternoon – I ended up whizzing up a couple of plain, simple felt panels to make the sides for my next vessels (see patterned pieces in the last post) – hopeless or what? 🙂 But it was all without pressure…

A change of scenery and fresh ideas

It’s always good to get away for a bit, have a change of scenery, new images and experiences which ultimately feed into the next projects. It’s not about how long you go away for but more about gaining a different perspective and coming back refreshed. Although my first vessel I produced after coming back home wasn’t a new design – I finally tried out an idea I’d been carrying around for a while. I had wondered how it would work and look if I used leather string to connect the sides and making the stitching an integrated feature of the item. So finally I tried it:

and I think it works quite well. What came next was to decide how to finish this off, i.e. I obviously ended up with the two ends of the leather string and needed to find a way to either secure the stitching and make the ends invisible – awkward as the string is quite thick – or again make it a design feature. I opted for the latter and came up with this:

An old necklace that I hadn’t really worn much was happily dissembled and the wooden beads used to secure the leather string while at the same time becoming an embellishment. Easy to do and looking fun!

And this is the finished vessel – this time I used different shades in- and outside, with the one stripe pattern being repeated also in- and outside.

   felt vessel fuchsia/aubergine square with beads

Size: 17 x 17 cm, H: 15 cm, 100 % wool with wooden beads, fake leather string

Working on new Cuffs

I seem to be back where I started…After working on the last few vessels I was left with a range of cut offs – bits and pieces that were left after cutting them into shape. And this is the part I love: handling all these different pieces of felted material in different sizes, shapes and patterns and coming up with something new. Which has now led to new prototypes for cuffs! I am still feeling my way around but am optimistic that I am on to new designs that I can develop:

 

This one started out as a long rectangular piece of felt which I sewed together into a tube which I then had to turn inside out (this was a major struggle as the ‘tube’ was very tight and the material fairly thick!). The result was a satisfyingly chunky but soft and rounded cuff. I made this a slip on one, i.e. the two ends are sewn together and I added the little silver beads to give it a lighter touch. As with my previous cuffs – it is lovely to wear as it is so soft and light.

I then moved on and started fiddling with the stripy cut offs (‘sidelines‘ ) again and came up with these prototypes:

I started by sewing the thin patterned felt bands onto a larger neutral i.e. un-patterned piece of felt to form a cuff/bangle. I thought this looked promising but it still needed something to give it some structure. Which led me to play around by introducing some beads:

 

These are still in ‘prototype’ mode but I like the potential and will follow this up…

The final (for now) design and my favourite so far is this:

These little squares were cut from the cut offs of my last purple/black vessel, strung up on an elastic string with a few silver and pink beads mixed in. It is simple, easy to make and – I find – very effective. As I said above – my favourite so far!

By the way – I was absolutely thrilled with my recent find of beads: living in a town in a rural area we are not spoilt with a large choice of craft or bead shops. So when I failed to find anything I liked in the local shops I searched a few second hand shops for jewellery – and was delighted to find several necklaces with exactly the kind of beads I had been looking for! It gives me such a sense of satisfaction to find materials for very little money (essential!) and to incorporate into something new. So – not only creating but also recycling – a great combination!