Felting. It’s everywhere you look and now it’s on An
Artistic Bent as well. That’s right, I
have finally gone and made my first felted item. I’ve been looking at felted purses, pillows,
blankets, etc. for the past couple years online. It wasn’t even intentional, I just kept coming
across them as I surfed and so I finally decided enough was enough and I was
going to try it myself.
A couple
months ago I took a trip to my local Value Village and searched through the
racks for 100% wool sweaters. I found
quite a few and at anywhere from $3.99 to $7.99 a piece plus a 30% discount
that day, it was turning out to be a very cheap investment.
I took them
home and ran them through the hottest setting on the washer and dryer a few
times until they came out ‘felted’ and then laid them out on my table for inspiration. One of my favourite Pins was a tote bag that
a woman made from a beautiful turquoise sweater and I thought I would try
something like that. Hers was gorgeous
but I wasn’t sure if I could do as good a job with the decorative flowers. Plus my sweaters were darker with more autumn
& winter tones, not vibrant like hers.
But I was going to give it a try anyway.
The first
sweater I used was lightweight dark grey.
It has a nice texture to it but in the end I found it a bit too
floppy. It’s just not as solid as I
would like a tote to be. So on to the
next.
One night after
a games night with some girlfriends I decided I wanted to do something crafty. Now usually I only have one glass of wine on
games night but that night I think I was on my third when I stepped into the
craft room. Tipsy and looking to craft,
things could have gone one of two ways...turns out I’m a good drunk crafter. ;)
As I looked
at my burnt orange felted sweater I knew exactly what I was going to do. A couple of years ago I downloaded a pattern
for a quilted tote from allpeoplequilt.com but had never got around to using it. After about 10 minutes of searching through
patterns I found it! It was a simple
design that would work well with the felted fabric. I set to work putting the pattern together on
some printer paper, taped them all together and then cut it out. Perfect.
Next step
was to cut a pocket for the inside and then sew it all together. Done!
I couldn’t believe how fast I was able to go from sweater to tote. The only thing left I wanted to do was add
some embellishment to the outside. The
turquoise tote I had seen on pinterest had some lovely felted roses on it so I
thought I would give felted flowers a try as well, but I was going to save that
for another night. It wasn’t going to
push my luck.
In the end
it took a couple nights to get the flowers all done, mostly because I was
figuring out how to do them myself.
There are a lot of great pictures online for felt flowers but no one
seems to give instructions. Oh well, I
finally figured it out my way, probably not the easiest or most efficient but
it worked. And in the end I think it
turned out pretty good. Not really a summery
tote but it will be good for the winter.
