Needle Felting Experiments

After days of felting/stitching and deliberating [more the point procrastinating], I'm able to share some little samples with readers.  I like the little attachment, and after a few teething issues, I think we are both ready to kiss and make up!!  It is a fun process, simple, but interesting to see how the barbed needles work to mesh the fibres together.  I really don't have a lot of carded fibres at the moment, and will see to that in due course.  But, I did manage to try two different colourways.  The first trial was using the lovely random dyed felt that Isabell sent me.  I had a small piece of blue/mauve wool which I tried to felt into a sort of flower.  Now that it's done, I've completely changed my mind, and it has now been named Jellyfish_1.  Don't laugh - not many months ago I went to Google in search of 'abstract jellyfish', and this site came up.  I adore this picture, so it has been my inspiration for the Jellyfish Family.................  The postcard pictured above is 'father jellyfish', in all his glory.  I've also managed to use our TAST2012 stitch for this week - running stitch.  The tentacles are made up of the running stitch, the herringbone superimposed over the felting, and trapped Angelina fibres.  I hope you can visualize him blobbing around in the depths looking for his 'bride'. 

Of course, the next in line is another postcard - Jellyfish_2, which can loosely be called 'the bride'.  For this piece, I've felted some embroidery wool, as well as some lovely soft mesh yarn I purchased from Pick Up Stitches [for knitting scarves].  I was given some paua shell pieces, and this particular one looked like it had possibilities.  Anyway, for the purpose of this experiment, the 'bride' awaits.   The soft pink mesh yarn felted quite well, and I'm quite happy with the result.

And the saga continues with the arrival of Jellyfish_3, little jellyfish [an ATC].  She [it's pink] doesn't look much, but she'll grow on you.........LOL...  Again I've used our week 10 stitch, running.  I'm a little disappointed with my satin stitch edgings on these cards.  I think the felt is very soft, and seems to roll a little in front of the needle as you stitch.

I managed to cut one more ATC out of the mauve but decided it just might look like something totally different.  It appeared to me to look like a little sweetpea bud, ready to emerge and give this little bee something to savour.  I added a few double cast-on stitches, and some drizzle stitches to the top, plus a small line of stem stitch .  This has just a little bit of wool embroidery yarn and a tiny snip of purple chiffon felted to the background.

I have one more ATC that is different again.  I have some acrylic/nylon knitting yarn that is easy enough to spread apart, and wanted to see how well it would felt.  This yarn is just the two colours, a golden yellow and a salmon/reddy pink [photo not showing quite the right colour].  I think this felted beautifully, and hope to make a bigger project with it soon.  Our TAST week 9 stitch was couching, so I've simply added some fine gold cord couching made into a spiral, with the pretty button in the centre.  I think the future project will have the gold cord couching done by machine zig-zag!!  I like this one very much, it has a sheen to it.

Thank you for so many encouraging comments regarding my needle felting attachment.  It's not a quick process, but then, nothing worthwhile ever is I suppose.

One last note - I was pleasantly surprised to see a post on another blog which mentioned, and shared my little pincushion worked with the Chiaramonte stitch.  You can see it here.  I was very happy with the instructions I found for this stitch, and wrote to the people after the pincushion was done.  I think it is lovely of the blog owner to post about my experience.