Fabric Felted ATC's

First let me just say I LOVE my needle felting machine. It is so cool. I am doing that quilt square exchange and thought I might do a felted square this month. I had all this purple fabric I purchased for pennies at a yard sale. I had a purple piece of craft felt and thought why not.

I first covered the whole piece in fabric shapes. Squares and rectangles. Thinking this would give it a quilt look. I then added the wool roving in several shades of purple. After that I sewed the whole piece with my sewing machine in various stitches around the fabric pieces and the wool roving. I found a piece of lilac purple lace and added that. Then, some eyelash yarn.

At this point, I became undecided about using it as a quilt square. The girl I was sending it to had her first sender not follow through. How disappointing. I knew it needed to be special and here I was just randomly playing. I knew then that this going to be a fabric ATC project that maybe I could trade with some other people and make a special quilt square with the remaining fabric.

The top two pictures are the ATC's I was able to cut from the sheet of fabric felted felt. [say that three times fast] The bottom picture is the fabric felted piece of felt. I was able to get eight ATC's and had some scrap pieces left over. I love the size and feel of the ATC's. I am not sure if they are finished. Should I add some beads? Maybe an image?

Felted Journal Covers

I recently acquired a felting machine. I have been fascinated for some time with the whole concept of felting. The machine gives you a few more options. One of those being that you can use it to fuse fabric to your felted piece. The machine is a lot faster, also.

This is a brand new world for me. I am experimenting with fabric, wool, felt, ribbon, lace, and yarn. Whoa! That is a lot to play around with. Once you sit down and spend some time you just want to try everything.

I started with a sheet of felt that you would do craft or hobbies with. Not a particularly heavy weight piece of felt. It was about the size of a piece of copy paper. I then grabbed a bunch of scraps from my sewing table, fiber bag, and some wool roving. Turned on the machine and began to randomly fill the sheet of felt. Each fabric, ribbon, lace has its own texture and look.
After the sheet was pretty much filled up I grabbed an image of a young woman that was printed on muslin and sewed it on with my sewing machine. I went randomly over the felted piece with my sewing machine to secure or highlight various parts of the sheet.

At this point I was sort of at a loss as what to do with the felted piece. I thought of cutting it up into ATC's or postcards. After a quick glance around my studio I decide maybe a book cover or a fabric book. I had a cheapy notebook I had picked up and it was the right size if I cut the sheet in two pieces. So I cut the sheet in two and used gel medium to glue it to the covers of the plain black notebook. Voila! A new journal and made from scraps except for the image and a paper flower. This really has possibilities.

Needle Felted ATC's

Last week I received my new issue of 'Paper Clothe and Scissors" magazine. I don't know about you but I love this magazine. I always try to do at least one project out of each publication of every art magazine I get. That to me is the purpose of reading these magazines. To be inspired and learn new techniques. The article by Kelli Perkins was inspiring. Plus, I already had a rainbow of roving and the needle felting tool.[ Someone had convinced me a year ago I simply had to try it.] Lots of left over felt sheets from a previous project. Some beads. I think I had everything I needed.

So, with magazine at hand, a comfortable chair and a good movie I was off. These are my first samples of needle felted ATC's. Remember they are my first stab. I can see how I progressed. The flowers were fun. I decided to make my own garden. The birds nest was off the cuff. Lack of brown roving sent me to the yarn pile. The results were better than expected. I found the whole process to be extremely relaxing.The jabbing definitely gets out any inner frustrations. Also , a little bit of roving goes a long way. I also machine stitched on most of the ATC's . I like the effect and it sort of just binds it all together. The beads glam it up and make it all sparkling. Sparkling is good.