Astounding!
NEW TECHNOLOGICAL BREAK-THROUGH!
Passive
Felting
Many people complain of joint problems from the heavy work of completing
the felt process on large pieces like rugs, tapestries and the like.
{Some think that felting needles are a harmless alternative-- little
do they know I got a "tennis elbow" once from the intensity of needlefelting
against a deadline... }.
So! This breakthrough is called
PASSIVE FELTING
and here's how you (don't) do it:
Felt up your work to the point where you can safely carry it to the
bathtub (or washing machine). Rinse (don't agitate) and spin. Or press
out extra moisture.
Flop item over a chairback, or fashion a giant towelbar by resting
a 2x4 across adjacent bookshelves, or however-- and let piece dry.
When dry, bundle it up and head for the bedroom.
Peel back the bedding, including your fitted bottom sheet.
Lay out semi-felted piece on the mattress cover. Tuck fitted sheet
back over it and remake the bed. Good night, sleep tight!
Every morning, peel back the bedsheets and rotate your work 90 degrees.
If the design has been dislodged, whip out that felting needle and
restore it. The mattress is your workbench.
After 3 or 4 days, with the kind of fleece I select, I can trust a
rug to finish felting from foot traffic.
This Passive Felting Method works because, like a washing machine,
a bed is one of the other places on the planet where heat, moisture
and friction cohabitate. Need I point out that those are the 3 main
ingredients in traditional feltmaking? That's all there is to it.
Whatcha think?
As for Fine Tuning:
Any piece of work carries the vibrational markers of the artist who
created it.
There may be items that you do not wish to bear your personal vibrations
out into the world.
There may be ways to remove your personal imprint from an item.
Just thought I'd mention these considerations. Maybe you'd let me
know where they lead.
Wishing you all good things.
 
As the
felting needle book was going to print, I packed up the paraphernalia
and headed for our first doll show.
Some dollmakers have already discovered how useful a felting needle
can be to their activities. Of course you can easily implant the hair
on a soft doll's scalp with a felting needle, but what about dolls
with hard heads-- composition, porcelain, Cernit, etc.?
This Daughter of an Engineer has come up with a solution!
Dig through your drawers for an unmatched sock. Cut off the toe. This
will be a scalp. Try it on your bald dolly and trim to size.
Find (or purchase) a scrap of foam rubber, or a big sponge. With your
scissors, snip out a "darning egg" about the size of your doll's head.
Leave a handle on it and stuff the handle into a coffee cup so the
darning egg will stand freely.
Fit the socktoe scalp on top of the darning egg.
Now you can use your felting needle to easily anchor locks of wool
or strips of combed wool!
A word about technique: vigorous needling may anchor the wool to the
foam instead of just to the toescalp. After a bit, try peeling the
wig off the darning egg to gauge the appropriateness of the depth
of your jabs.
A little wool should be hanging through to the underside for security's
sake.
The wig when finished is glued to the head.
Trusting you find this an enjoyable method for creating dolly hair-do's.
About the wool locks: everyone develops their own preferences... Icelandic
sheep grow long luxurious shaded locks. See if Susan Mongold at Tongue
River Ranch in Montana will send you an assortment. (Her Icelandic
Sheep web address is on the Links
page.) And another highly desirable fleece with teeny tiny curly ringlets
is Blue-Faced Leicester, and Wensleydale. These are rare breeds and
hard to find, but totally delicious and well worth the search. If
you find some who care to be advertised, let me know, okay?
My book has
illustrations for separating out locks and implanting them.
Darn
Those Socks!
I am
writing this sitting here in a pair of socks whose heels are freshly
patched YES! with the help of a FELTING NEEDLE. And a darning egg
snipped out of a foam scrap...
A while back, some bright-eyed workshop participant came up with this
scheme (who ARE you, dear?? Please contact. Your name should be blazoned
in the Halls of the Heelless)...
HERE'S
HOW:
Find some wool fleece you'd like to see on the sock.
Position the foam darning egg (a wooden one may snap the needle) appropriately
inside the sock, hole well centered.
Tease the wool fleece.
Needle the teased wool over the hole (gently! don't plant it in the
foam!) and out onto the sock, maybe 1/2" all around for security.
Peel sock off egg. Put it on. Put on your shoe. The felting process
(heat, moisture, friction) is invoked as you walk around.
I mean, could this onerous job be more fun, more simple, more easy???
I did my backlog of 6 perforated socks in ten minutes!! Blessings
upon the bright brains of my currently anonymous participant.
I've
discovered that when somebody becomes the least bit notorious, like
by writing a book even of limited circulation, people want to know
where you are so they can maybe intersect with you. Take heed in case
you find yourself in this position!
Following
my own advice, I'm confessing after the fact to having been in Norway
this summer, not to visit my little Norwegian grandsons but to MAKE
FELT! A business trip! This was as part of a project called Felting
in Nature, all women from all over, a dozen of us, on an islet 'way
out in the North Atlantic. We were perched on a rocky mountainside,
on a roadbed that had been blasted in there a decade before. The place
was covered with miniscule trees, lichens and wildflowers, enthusiastically
taking over from the devastation. We worked and worked and worked
overtime with beautiful donated batts of wool from the mill in Bergen,
and had a wonderful ceremonial Grand Gallery Opening with the local
folks and dignitaries.
The
works have been left there. Neighborhood children have become the
overseers. We shall see what the winter weather has to say about this
project! Many parts of my installation were given as gifts to various
contributors... I felt this was quite an honor, but there is only
one photograph extant of the fleeting moment when the installation
was intact... Sometime soon I'll get a copy of that and post it for
curiosity's sake. The rest of the venture is well documented on Birgitte
Krag Hansen's website, www.FeltMaking.dk.
Perhaps
you can sense the presence created by all these women working together,
language barriers irrelevant, and the support of the village and the
swarms of children hovering about. I hold this warmth in my heart.
From
the never to be published
Madd Maggs' Real Wild Recipes & Remedies
Wool Dyeing with Kool-Aid
(sun tea method)
3/4
to 1 oz clean wool (large handful)
2 pks
unsweetened drink mix (mix flavors for different colors)
1 Tblsp
distilled (white) vinegar
2 cups
hot tap water
1 wide-mouth
quart jar
either
use freshly washed wool or soak clean wool overnight in tepid tap
water
the
next day:
put
drink mix packages and vinegar in quart jar
add
hot tap water and stir well to dissolve--or not so well for streaked
wool
add
wet wool and place jar in sunny window, greenhouse or solar oven
leave
for 1 1/2 to 2 hours or until dye is absorbed and water is clear (blues
and reds take the longest to absorb); I frequently set jars in the
morning and ignore until late afternoon/early evening/next morning
when I have time to rinse them
rinse
and dry in shade
for
tie-dyed effect:
place
1 1/2 to 2 oz wet wool in large glass baking pan (13 in x 8 in x 2
in or so)
add
hot water to barely cover wool
sprinkle
with 2 Tblsp white vinegar
sprinkle
with 4 pks drink mix
do not
stir
place
pan in sunny window 1 1/2 to 2 hours or longer (see above note)
rinse
and dry in shade
I have
also used Durkies' and McCormick's food dyes in place of or in combination
with Kool-Aid with good results. Use about 50 drops of food color
per quart jar if using the food dye alone or start with between 5
and 15 drops in combination. Also, Easter egg dyes, but these tend
to fade in sunlight. Experiment!
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