How to make a Wrapped and Felted Bangle

The other day I made a bangle. I have made them before but it has been a while. So long ago, I can’t find the pictures. I know I have seen them recently while looking for something else. I was not as good at labelling things then as I am now so searching didn’t help much. Anyway, for this one, I wanted to use some of my handspun. I have many little balls of yarn as I never make much of any one thing.

To start you need a piece of cord or yarn. Make it the size you want your finished bangle. It will not shrink in size. I used a scrap of yarn.

You need some wool and some yarn. I am using some very dark purple merino but you won’t see any of it when I am done. The yarns are some of my mostly wool handspun.

Wrap the roving around the string. Wrapping down through the hole and back around until its all covered.

At first, I thought I would wrap the 2 yarns side by side. The larger ball was too hard to poke through the hole all the time. I forgot to take a picture of wrapping the pattern I did but you can see here how snug I did it. It is compressing the roving but not a lot.

This is the wrapped and wet bangle.

At this point, I just wrapped my fingers around it and squshed it like making a playdough bracelet. Move the bangle around and around so it was all getting squished. I did that for a few minutes, not very long as I am impatient. I rolled it up in a rolling mat. It’s a piece of the foamy, rubbery shelf liner. I rolled maybe 10 times and then unrolled rotated and flipped it. I did that maybe 4 or 5 times. I wasn’t thinking about it as a tutorial at that point, so I wasn’t keeping track. When I was done it was flat.

Don’t panic, just pick it up and put one hand into the hole and one on the outside and roll it back and forth in the hands like making a playdough snake. Do that all around the bangle until it is round again and feels firm. You could just squeeze it for longer and then roll it in your hands if you don’t want to roll it in a mat.

It really works, it is round and the yarn has given it texture, as well as colour. The longest part of making the bangle is wrapping the yarn. If you were not as neat as I was, you could do it much faster and would have a more textured bangle.

 

Here it is dry.

You can see it’s a little fuzzy. I wanted more texture and more sparkle. Both Yarns have silk and some Angelina in them. So I got out my trusty dollar store disposable razor and gave it a heavy shave.

There is a lot more texture and you can see some of the minor colours and some shiny and sparkly bits. I had a really hard time trying to capture the sparkle. Most of the little pink dots are sparkle and the orange Bits are silk.

It is too large for me really It would fall off if I would it loose on my wrist. I push it up to my forearm. On a less Rubenesque person or my much younger self, the upper arm would work well. It was fun to do and I should have thought of it for the first quarter challenge.

A Picture for Exhibition

Last week I missed doing my blog post because I had no power or internet. My area was hit by 6 tornados. We were not hit we had no damage. Some areas near us were hit very hard, the large power substation near us was hit and some of the cell phone and internet towers too.

Before all that I did manage to work on my piece for the guild exhibition and sale. I do not think I will get it done in time as it is due in a week. The theme was a 100-mile inspiration. I decided to do a scene with the Parlement buildings. I am using 2 prefelt layers with a piece of cotton gauze in the middle for the background.

First I found a simple outline picture I could use for the outline of the building. I cut that out and tried it on the background.

I pinned it to another piece of prefelt and cut it out.

Then it was time to work ou the clouds.

After I took the picture and looked at it I realized I had made the clouds to symmetrical. Its funny how looking at a picture sometimes shows you more than just looking at it. I tacked all the pieces together with a few jabs of a felting needle

Next was adding fireworks as I am thinking it should be Canada Day.

Then I cropped the picture to see better how it will look.

I wet felted the piece and now I need to do some stitching around the building so it will show better.and my daughter said I should add beads around the fireworks like the sparkles you see with fireworks. I thought maybe some sparkly thread and a bead at the end of each firework. What else would you add to this silhouette picture?

A felt Christmas Card

I sent a card to my partner for the Christmas card on the forum. holiday-exchange-2017   She has it now so I can tell you all about making it.

First I went through my old felt bin to find a thickish piece of felt and cut out a tree shape. It’s a blueish green even if it doesn’t look like it.

I then cut out some red prefelt I had for the background. I did 2 layers for each of these. I did the extra on so if this didn’t turn out I could go with plan B. 

Then I roughly cut out a tree shape form a silk scarf I got at the second hand store. I then layers the pieces and wet it all and trimmed the silk a little.       

Even with 2 layers the prefelt is not very thick so I added red merino to cover the extra silk and make it thicker and more sturdy. I cut the wool to give it a nice straight edge to put up against the tree and give a nice clean line.

After that was done I flipped it over and wrapped the excess around to the back. I wanted to make sure the tree would stick to the finished felt  so I did some poking with my felting needles.

This after the fulling.  I blocked them to square them up. The blue colour of the tree came through the silk more than I wanted so I gave it a shave to bring the green back.

I went through my stash looking for some fuzzy gold yarn to use as tinsel but instead found this yarn with beads that I think looks like lights. I sewed it on and then added some shiny pony beads as Christmas balls and a star.

I thought it looked ok but lacking something.  So I added some 3D sheep. I think they improve it and make it look finished.  

I printed off a post card template from the internet and using fusible web ironed it to the back of the felt. I forgot to take a picture of that but I am sure you all know what the back of a postcard looks like. I like it and my exchange partner seemed to be very happy with it. No I just wait for Canada Post to decide to get mine to me. I am hopeful it will arrive before Christmas.

Here’s  wishing you all a great holiday season,

Ann

Felting with friends Weekend- Hats

More on my felting weekend.  We all meat at Maureen’s ( http://www.dreamspinfibres.ca/ ) A great place, she has so much fiber to choose from.

Three of us made hats based on a hat in Judit Pocs video. It seems to be gone from the internet. It was mostly about making a rug.  This is Diane and Susan( http://www.suzannetowns.ca/ ) sizing up a template.

Diane and Susan

They made their hats on the first day. They like a really firm hat so their scaled up the template and added more layers than I do.

laying out fiber laying out fiber 2

more colour and embelishments 3 dianes hat half done 2

Susan added come great colour  and Dian used some resists to reveal some fabric on the layer underneath.

Diane and Susan finnished hats 2

Diane added a string of small felted yarn balls to her hat. The parts that stick down were up to high so the pulled them down and twisted them to get them in a better position.

On the second day I did my hat. I adjusted the pointy parts so they would be lower. and left the pointy top smaller.

my hat ready to felt my hat finished my hat finnished 2

I should have used a different colour yarn for the embellishments. The colour was much to close the hat colour.

Dian made another hat on the second day. I didn’t get any pictures of it in progress. the template was like witches hat.

dianes seconed hat 3 dianes seconed hat 4

I have to give one of these a try. I like the way it is folded in on itself.

Felting weekend with friends: small bags

 

Last week end a friend Dianne Lemire and I went down to our friends Maureen Harding’s place for a felters weekend. Another friend Susan came on Friday to felt with us. It is so much fun to spend a week end with other people that love to felt.

I wanted to make a new little purse to use at shows. First I did a black one with a nice blue silk inside and a pocket. For the design on the flap I balled up some peices of orange silk and wound them up with thread to keep them in a ball.

silk balls on bag

I used a piece of black prefelt to cover them.  Then some silk roving to make them look more like a swirl. I used a scrap of commercial prefelt but you could make a piece of your own. Once it was dry I cut the tops off the raised  peices to reveal the bright colour underneath.

black bag finnished

This is the inside with the pocket and you can see I added an orange nuno swirl that is hidden by the front flap.

black bag finnished inside

Black is great but I decided I needed something brighter as well so I went with a multi coloured roving in orange.

orange bag layout

I added a pocket to this one too. Here you can see I forgot to add soap to the water and  it sits on the wool in beads. I think its a cool picture.

water on bag pocket

I used the flat glass “marbles” that they sell for decorating instead of silk balls this time. You can really see the out line of the marbles on the inside of the flap

orange bag inside orange bag finished uncut

I made a long snake to use as a strap. It is long enough to wrap around my waist or use as a shoulder bad depending on what I am wearing. I will put some grommets in the ends and 2 on the back to thread the rope through.

orange bag with snake  The holes I cut to reveal the marbles are not very big. I think I will probably enlarge them.  I will post a picture when the grommets are in and the holes are bigger.

I will show you more form our felting weekend in my next post.

Fingerless Mitt Class in February

I am teaching at the Ottawa Valley Weavers and Spinners Guild
red fingerless mitts 2
 Fingerless Mitts, Cuffs or Wrist Warmers
Feb 22 (Saturday) – Wet Felting—
Description: Learn basic wet-felting techniques while keeping your wrists stylishly warm. Make a pair of wet felted cuffs that can be embellished in many ways. Keep your hands warmer but still allow full mobility for knitting , spinning or weaving or texting.
Your cuffs can be small and discrete or big and bold!
Prerequisite: None
Class Size: not more than 6
Time: 10am-3pm Level: Beginner
Cost: $40 members, $50 non-members Materials fee: $10
please contact the workshop coordinator to register: workshops@ovwsg.comfingerless mitt blue 1 fingerless mitt flowered 1

Fingerless Mits Experiment

Christmas is coming so I am still working on fingerless mitts for my guild sale the first weekend in November. One of my scarves made the poster.

OVWSGposter2012-3-400

I decided to try an experiment with a couple of pairs of Mitts. I wanted to make long cuts to reveal another colour.  I wrapped some shrink tubing and some regular tubing like you might use in a fish tank in some wool. I gave it a quick felt to get the wool tight around the tube. I thought this might be the best way to keep the fibers where I wanted them. I placed them between the layers of the mitts.

tubes collage

It worked really well.  After I cut the felt and took the tubes out I steamed them and opened up the slits. They are purple and pink and pink and purple but the cameras seems to think the purple is blue. I think it is because the wool of the table is so yellow.

purple and pink pink and purple

This is what they look like on. Sorry the pictures are bad I had to take it on my own arm.

purple and pink on pink and purple on

They turned out really well . I think I could have used less wool around the inclusions. I think I might felt them more next time too.

the other thing I did recently was make a matching set of hat and mitts. I added some silk to both, scrunching it  up to make it very textured. One small part didn’t stick down properly on the hat and will need a couple of stitches.

gray hat and mitts

I have more hats on the go and need to do some scarves before the sale but I think things are going well so far. Have you tried anything new recently?

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