Becka’s Project Journal

Another busy week.  I did bring these earrings to the Textile Center Shop today.

Antique glass pearls rescued from a broken necklace, wrapped in “s” curved of peyote stitched seed beads.  I love the deep warm gold color of these pearls.

Took a really lovely group of people on a bus tour of art in Minneapolis today.  Got to go to the Interact Center, which I had never been to and is seriously cool.  They are a day care program for adults with disabilities that focuses entirely on art programming -visual art, theater, music, dance.  Then to my favorite non-textile place, Northern Clay Center.  I have no earthly idea about anything ceramics, which is probably why I like it so well (and probably also that I get to hang out with Sarah, their education goddess.)  Then I took them on a tour of the Textile Center.  If you haven’t been in lately, I have about 80 quilts from a 6th grade residency project that are up on the walls and they are AMAZING.  The kids wrote a poem and illustrated it with a mini quilt.  It’s worth a trip, I promise.

I am making some little clutch bags for a friend of mine who is getting married in May.  She wanted a gift for her bridesmaids and asked if she picked out some fabric, could I make the bags.  Don’t you love what she found?

The background fabric is a herringbone weave, so I added a little twill tape with the same texture and some buttons that the bride also picked out.  I stitched some little freshwater pearls on top of the button on her bag to make it a little special.  The other 2 have the same large navy button, and the one with the white buttons is for her little sister.

I am off to get more interfacing now, I ran out before I finished the little wrist straps.

Skipped last week because there was no work in progress, only the Textile Center Garage Sale.  24/7.  More about that later.

This week it’s this shawl:

with this yarn:  Misti Alpaca Cotton/Silk handpaint in color Neptune

which will be cast on in approximately 30 minutes, while enjoying a decaf latte with my knitting girls.

I found out today about an exhibit that the Science Museum of London is doing.  It’s called “Stitch Yourself” and is going to be part of the “Who am I?” exhibit opening at the museum in June 2010.  You make a small stitched self portrait and send it off and they will include it in the display.  The even cooler part of this is that I will be in London in June 2010 and could go and see my stitched self in person!  I gotta participate!

If you send in a self portrait of yourself and let me know, I will try to get a picture of you when we visit the museum.

I had a comment with lots of questions about felting and so I thought I would just answer in a post and share with everyone.

I love all of your crafts but I am really interested in wet felting slippers and am wondering if you could recommend a place to purchase good roving to use?

In Minneapolis, you want to go to the Fiber Studio.  Pam, the owner, is super nice and she also sells on etsy and mail orders.  Maybe more important than where you get your wool, is what kind of roving you get.  I recommend Corriedale for beginners.  Corriedale is the kind of sheep that the wool comes from, it’s not a brand name or company.  Corriedale is a nice soft fiber, but it is a little coarser than merino and it is much easier to felt if you are just starting out.  It is what I use with all of the kids & beginner classes that I teach because it is so reliable.  Make sure that your fiber does not say “superwash” or “washable”.  Those are treated so that they will not felt.

Also, how many ounces does it take to do a pair of slippers?

That’s a little hard to say, because it depends on what you are doing – how thick they are, how big you are making them (kids or adults, short or bootie style).  I would guess that somewhere between 3-4 oz would probably be enough.

I just tried my first pair and it was a disaster. Not all of the wool I used felted.

I am so sorry!  You might have had a mix of wools that didn’t all felt the same.  When you start out, I would try to make sure you have all the same kind of wool – different colors are fine, but get all Corriedale or all merino.  I taught a class once with some beautiful mystery fiber – all but one color in the mix felted really well and the navy blue didn’t felt at all.  It was really discouraging and my students were patient but frustrated.

I did one color for the inside and another for the top and the top just fell off when I tried to remove it from the resist!

I am guessing this is because your piece started to felt before it was completely assembled.  This is really common in my beginner classes, so don’t feel bad!  Two things are probably happening:

1.  When you first start assembling your slippers (or any other felt shape) you have to handle the wool really gently.  You can wrap it around your resist, get it wet, add layers etc, but you don’t want to do anything to agitate it until you are completely done building up the layers.  Agitating would be anything that involves squishing, patting, rubbing, kneading, or smooshing the wool.  If you have agitated the bottom part of your slippers so that they have started to felt and then you try to add another layer on top, they will not “stick” together no matter what you do.  What happens when you are felting is that the individual fibers shrink, curl up and lock together.  Once that “felting” has started, there is nothing for the next new layer of fibers to grab on to because everything has already grabbed on to something else.  The way to fix this is to make sure that you have every layer and all the parts of the slipper completely assembled around the resist before you do any agitating.  You will want to pat and rub the fibers in to place, resist the urge!

2.  If you add your layers of wool too much at a time, sometimes it doesn’t want to be friends with the other wool.  Thin layers are the key.  Add a thin layer of wool, add a mist of soapy water.  Repeat many many times.  Thin layers means that you should be able to see through it.  Spread the dry fibers out so they are like a thin sheet before you add them to your slipper.

For more great step-by-step help, check out this book:

Feltmaking by Chad Alice Hagen

Chad is a fantastic teacher and she knows her stuff.  This is my “go to” book for wet felting.  She has a lot of steps (like making your olive oil soap solution) so it seems a little involved, but trust me.  Follow her instructions the first few times until your fingers learn what they are doing, then you can start to experiment.  The olive oil soap “slime” is worth every minute of the effort, especially if you are making something big.

Hope that helps!

He is my hero.

(He’s a photographer.  He was already Andy’s hero, but that makes it even better.  Andy wants to send him a copy of Lightroom.)

http://www.etsy.com/shop/SecretSelves

Vintage tablecloth repurposed.  Hemmed with a little yellow bias tape.  Happy Spring.

(Andy gives me a hard time about never posting a photo with my face.  So here is one.)

Circle frame brooches?  Rosette pins?  Medallions?  I don’t know what to call them, but I am making them.  Two above in batik fabric, two from tiny scraps of vintage fabric, one in progress.  They are about the size of a 50 cent piece.  (Does anyone even know how big that is anymore?)  More results of my Native American beadwork research.  I realized at some point while looking at all of the techniques and photos that I might possibly be able to do these things.  I have tried making rosettes probably a dozen times between the time I was 8 and 18 (and probably once or twice after that).  They were always impossibly hard to get everything even and smooth and perfect concentric circles.  Then it occurred to me that I should try again.  I have a lot more skills now than I did then.  So I am learning a new stitch, which has you lay down 4 beads at a time and do a back stitch through half of them to keep them in place. (I will draw you a diagram sometime).  I did one pretty darn good rosette, which I would love to show you a photograph of, but I have buried it under some tax receipts somewhere.  Maybe next week.  Those up above are the same stitch, but just two rows and then a pretty beaded edge.

A family favorite for National Poetry Month.

“Spring In The Bronx”
by Anonymous.

Spring is sprung, the grass is ris.
I wonders where the birdies is.
They say the birds is on the wing.
Ain’t that absurd?
I always thought the wing was on the bird.

April is National Poetry Month.  I didn’t know that.  (Thanks Donna)  This is the first poem I ever had to memorize.  We learned it in Kindergarten and I still remember it.  It was the first “grown up” poem I learned about (not Mary had a Little Lamb or something just for kids) and I remember being very impressed by that.

Who Has Seen the Wind?
Who has seen the wind?
Neither I nor you.
But when the leaves hang trembling,
The wind is passing through.
Who has seen the wind?
Neither you nor I.
But when the trees bow down their heads,
The wind is passing by.

by Christina Georgina Rossetti  (1830-1894)