Felted Pincushions--A New Idea!

Today I made more felted wool pincushions and tried a new idea which I hadn't seen elsewhere before...

I cut scraps of wool batting into long, narrow strips, 1 to 2 inches wide, and rolled the strips into tight balls for the pincushion centers (this was last month's new idea). Thin wisps of wool roving were laid over the balls a little at a time until they were completely covered with color.

Then I got an idea; I was disappointed with the few colors of the roving I had (which were not very bright), but I did have some colorful wool yarns. Humm...could I use the yarn around the ball and felt the finished product?

I was hoping the idea would work because I made quite a few pincushions...

They turned out beautifully!

Circle Quilt Beginnings, Yarn Fun

Today I sketched and then laid out the background for a blue, black and brown circle quilt. Using smallish pieces of fabric, I folded them as needed and pinned them to the design wall to check my colorways and layout.

I like the way it turned out. Now I'll cut these folded pieces into the correct sizes and sew them together as my background.

Today, Main Street Yarns in Watkinsville, GA had a grand opening for it's new yarn dyeing studio and offered demo's. The yarn was soaked in vinegar-water before dyeing, then we were able to dye a hank of yarn with acid dye and a sponge brush. It was then microwaved to set the color. After a good rinsing the yarn is hung out to dry. Beautiful!

These are some hunks of roving I purchased at the yarn shop today which I hope to used to make felted pin cushions. The dark ones are yummy merino wool, and I hope to dye the light one sometime in the near future.

My latest scarf is nearly finished. It's simple but the colors are beautiful and will go well with my winter coat. It's great to have a small project to work on in waiting rooms...my method of "recycling" otherwise wasted slots of time.

Felting

Recently I stumbled upon a wonderful blog with colorful photos and wool felting ideas. The address is blog.betzwhite.com . Betz has written a book on felting and has wonderful free tutorials on her blog.

Here is my first wool pincushion made from two felted sweaters (well, 1-1/2" strips from the felted sweaters). Isn't it adorable? I followed Betz's directions for felting the sweaters and used some of her jellyroll pincushion directions plus some of my own ideas. Here are the Clover tools which can be found at Hobby Lobby and other arts/crafts outlets. Be sure to keep your fingers away from the needle ends, and lock your tool when not in use.

1. I cut 1-1/2" strips from my felted sweaters and then laid them across my felting brush, one on top of the other, and needle felted them together so that they would not move as I rolled them. For some reason, I couldn't felt the red "into" the cream, but the cream felted fine into the red (cream on top). Humm.


2. With a needle and thread ready to secure the rolled pieces, I tightly rolled the two together with the red on the "outside" (underside when rolling).


3. When the two became one jellyroll piece, I trimmed the white raw edge by about 1/8", sewed the red raw edge to the body of the jellyroll, and stitched several times through the body of the newly formed pincushion.


4. Finally, I needle felted the top and bottom a little so that they wouldn't separate with use.

Voila! Easy and fun.