Sunday Felting

Long time no felt ... so I thought I might do something new today. I have been following this lovely lovely blog called Bure-Bure, | cannot understand a word of it because the lovely lady is Lithuanian, but she makes the most beautiful felt slippers. I don't know if she understands english but I keep leaving comments telling her how beautiful they are. I wanted to try making some slippers, even though I also have no idea how she goes about getting the shape. I made some plastic resists based vaguely on the shape of my foot, but much bigger ... as it turned out much much too much bigger:-) I was so worried about them turning out too small. Here is how they looked after laying out and wetting and rolling for a bit. You can see how stupidly large they are.

I took the whole lot to the kitchen table and wondered what else to do with them. Dunk suggested I finish them and put them on freecycle. M and I found it all very amusing thinking up good uses for them. I came up with the idea of using them as covers for welly boots... or as a little papoose for a teddy bear. I used Corriedale and found it was less enthusiastic about felting than the Merino, it is a coarser and slightly crimped fibre. In the end I cut one in half and plumped for making another baby hat, since the baby will have grow out of the first one quite soon:
We used Dunk's new floodlights to take the photos and I think it has worked out really well, the subtle pastel colours have come out beautifully. I lined the inside with a darker pink which shows here on the hat brim. Then I chopped part of one side from the other slipper leaving a flap and made it into a little bag. The flap was very resistant to my efforts to tidy the edging so I have left it very 'organic'. I think I will have another go at the slippers with a more sensible sized pattern.