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.

Yard Sale Finds

Saturday was full of traffic. You can really tell when "the Season" has arrived here at the beach. Wild crazy drivers that think because they are on vacation it is okay to stop dead in the road and pull something out of their cooler. I went for my usual "biscuit and sweet tea" at a national drive through chain restaurant before starting and actually got yelled at by some man from Maine because the cashier and I chatted for a moment. I bought his food for him, figured he really needed a RAK. So that is how my Saturday morning started. Hope yours was fruitful.

I went to one estate sale. They are always sad. I bought the powder container. I love these. I got my grandmother's when she passed away. A turquoise glass one. Every time I open it I smell her. Brings back a flood of memories. Since then every once in awhile I will run across one that is just beautiful. I really like the way even the smallest of thing can have such style.

This was a lace day. I found tons of lace, sewing supplies, and ribbon. All bought for quarters. I did find two pieces of white ironstone - they belonged to the women's Mother. Along with some funky shell and mother of pearl earrings. A quarter each. These I will be taking apart and using in a mermaid swap. I also found a heavy duty metal stabler and two scrabble games for fifty cents for them both. Not a haul but a relaxing morning all in all.