My Material Madness

2009-10-18T09:27:00.000-07:00

Hi everyone! Sorry it's been a long time since I posted anything, I've been very busy with homework...

Recently I found a new area of interest, quilting. Quilting isn't just making patchwork blankets, you can make all sorts of really nice stuff. I made a small piece of quilt a few weeks ago, this is how I did it.

First I cut some plain backing fabric, some wadding and some fancy material and some sheer nylon into squares roughly 10cm by 10cm. I lined them up and pinned them around the edge. I then used a machine to sew random lines of sewing. I wanted the pieces of nylon that weren't near any sewing to be melted away, at first I tried ironing it but that wasn't hot enough so in the end I dug out a soldering iron and cut the pieces out with that. It did work quite well but on the thinner shapes you had to make sure you actually made an outline around it otherwise it just melted it to the fabric. Then I edged it with zigzag stitch.

That is roughly how to make a quilt piece, although you don't have to use nylon or sew random lines across it, all you really need is a plain backing fabric, some wadding and a nice base material and the rest of the design is up to you.

Hopefully I will be able to include a photo next time! By the way, do you like my background? I got it off www.thecutestblogontheblock.com which has loads of nice free backgrounds and banners.

2009-08-04T08:09:00.000-07:00

Another picture of the Norse fashion show. Again, this is something I want to try.

A picture of the Norse fashion show. I like the black hat!

These felt necklaces are very nice, I'm going to try making them.

This is very nice, so I bought it.

An Angora rabbit. You can even get wool from them!

So much nice wool, which to choose?

Lots and lots of lovely fibre!

Not really sure what this is, but I'm going to try making some (I think it's felt)

Some cool looking rugs, I wonder how they were made?

Some cute little mice made of old socks.. something I want to try making

Wool fest

2009-07-28T05:50:00.000-07:00

Hi again!!!! Ok, I haven't had that much time for blogging , so now I've finally got round to telling you about wool fest...

Wool fest is a kind of annual market where people from all over England come to buy and sell things fiberish from other peoples stalls.

In June sometime, me and my mum set out for the lake district (about a five hour drive from us). We arrived at a youth hostel absolutely exhausted and went to sleep. The next day we drove to wool fest. After some confusion with car parking we queued up to get inside.

There was loads of things inside, we didn't know where to look first! I had brought my camera with me and was happily snapping away at anything that was too expensive so I could try and make it when I got back. My mum was in absolute heaven, she spent a long time looking at (and buying) lots of amazing fiber. I bought quite a lot, I got a little bag of fiber which looked like it would make perfect hair for my wire doll, a beany frog, and we both got a present for my little sister, a needle felt fairy kit. There were some cool displays too, one with some pretty rare breed sheep ( the video on here is of an angry sheep when its partner went to the display!) and a really interesting one with some people wearing norse-inspired clothes they had made themselves out of various materials. Yes, I did take millions of photos but whether I will actually get round to making any of them I don't know...

My next post will be of my best woolfest photos, I couldn't fit them all on here!

Cool crafty websites

2009-06-15T12:06:00.000-07:00

It can sometimes be hard looking for inspiration for any kind of crafty project. Where do you start? What can you use? Books can be quite useful, but often you might just need help choosing a material, or you might want someone's opinion on a certain project.

So for this post I've included a few websites that I can recommend to help you with your projects. Enjoy!

www.ravelry.com- You do have to sign up for this one,but don't worry, its free! On here people can post knitting projects, while others who have tried the project post pictures and comments on how they thought it went. People have 'stashes' of wool,which they can trade. Well worth signing up for this one!!

www.kaysk9s.com- I found this site really inspirational! The artist running this site makes needle felted pets, and you can send pictures of your favorite canine to her and she will make a needle felted miniature of them. She has her own blog, www.kaysk9.blogspot.com. Best of all, she includes her technique so you can have a go yourself!

www.sheepfold.co.uk- This website sells lots of pretty knitting purse and bag kits (I am making a fulled purse from there at the moment) as well as some scarf kits, all kinds of wool, free patterns books and lots more. There is also some info on the sheep they get their wool from, and you can email in pictures of your finished projects that will be displayed on the website.

www.winghamwoolwork.co.uk- This websites sells a wide range of fibres , wools ,spinning equipment, felting stuff, books, magazines and other bits of useful stuff. There are lots of nice fibres, and if you are looking to start spinning your own wool this is a good website to buy a wheel from.

I hope you enjoy looking at these websites, if you find any good ones tell me about them in a comment!

Lots and lots of felting!

2009-04-07T07:02:00.000-07:00

Hi everyone!

In this post I will be talking about one of my favorite types of material, felt!

There are two main ways of making felt, wet felting and needle felting.

I like doing needle felting best, because it is very simple and not very time consuming or messy. All you need is some fiber (merino wool is very good) in a color of your choice, a bit of foam and some needle felting needle. What you do is simply stab the fiber repeatedly with the needle, which are quite special because they have ridges along their sides, to knot the fiber together. They are also very sharp, and accidentally stabbing your fingers is very very painful! The foam is important because this is what you put your fiber on while you are stabbing it so a)you don't make holes in your table and b) you don't snap your needles by bashing them on a solid surface! After a bit you will have noticed that the fiber will have shrunk slightly, and will be harder. Keep going and soon you will have a lovely,soft bit of felt. You can make all sorts of things with needle felting by wrapping the fiber around itself then felting it to make a nice ball shape, and you can attach felt to other things using needle felting. I have made a family of four penguins just using needle felting, hopefully I will be able to post a picture of them soon!

Wet felting is very different to needle felting. Instead of using a needle, you just submerge the fiber in hot soapy water and rub it vigorously. This is very tiring and you often need more than one person for a bigger project! One of the disadvantages of wet felting is that you can only make flat shapes. Recently I made a nuno felt scarf(pictured top right). Nuno means 'onto cloth' in japanese, because I was felting decorative bits of fiber onto a scarf-size bit of net. It was very tiring and I had to have another person helping me!

Another way of wet felting is knitting an object,like a hat, several sizes too big and then putting it the washing machine to felt it. I have not tried this yet but I am hoping to make a nice pair of slippers that I saw in a book with this method.

Bye for now!

More wire dolls

2009-02-23T04:39:00.000-08:00

Sorry I haven't posted anything for ages!

I have been working more on my wire doll, after I made the wire armature(pictured bottom right), I then had to wrap it with wadding( pictured top left). This part was really interesting because you can build up muscles and hips for your doll to give it more character. The next step of making the doll is making hands, I am going to have a go at making proper hands with fingers and wire inside them, which is going to be quite tricky! The bit I am looking forward to doing is making material to wrap around the doll, which should be fun because there are loads of really interesting techniques you can use, like using a heat tool over layered fabrics so you can see different bits of the fabrics beneath.

Will make another post soon, hopefully!

A bit about me and materials...

2009-02-10T03:34:00.000-08:00

Hi everyone!!!

This blog is about absolutely anything to do with material. I'll post things about clothes, fashion ,materials dolls or anything I can think of!

For christmas I got a really amazing book about doll making. It has loads of stuff about making materials with different tools, like a soldering iron, or a heat tool.At the moment I am making a wire doll. So far I have only made the armature (the wire bit inside the doll). This was very fiddly, I got poked by the wire a lot, and I made two attempts before I was satisfied! For christmas I also got a miniature dressmaking kit. It came with some really nice materials, as well as a plain white satin dress to embellish. So far, I have made two dresses and I've decorated the plain one. The kit also came with a notebook to sketch ideas in, which I've used a bit.

Hopefully in my next post I will be able to put some photos in!