Second Felt Hat

A while back I wrote about the first hat I made in the Dawn Edwards felted hat class, my rainbow tree fungus hat.  

During that class I also had time to felt another hat, but not to shape it.  Finally a couple weeks ago, I shaped it and finished it.  I was mostly tired of it being almost finished and unwearable!  I got as far as this during the class.  I felted it just like the other one I made, but it gave me a chance to learn to make cords and seed pods, additional techniques.  

After sitting around like that for months, I finally shaped it, with water and steam and pins.  It's meant to have some sore of folds in it, and I just wet it down and pinned it in place on my hat block.  I steamed it some, but my hat block is an inexpensive synthetic one so I couldn't steam too much.  But it worked and held it's shape so that was good!

The last step was to stitch peas into the seed pod.  I was supposed to have little felted balls to stitch in the two seed pods but I forgot to make any, so I used these two wooden beads instead.  The seed pod was fun to make, with lots of different colors of wool inside it.

And here I am wearing it!  You can't see the danglys very well in this selfie,  they're sort of wrapped around my neck.  It fits very well and is quite comfortable.  I think it's more wearable than the rainbow tree fungus hat, and I love the seed pods.

All in all my first forays into felting were successful and I learned a lot.  Enough that I think I can incorporate a bit of wet felting in my work if it seems necessary, but it's certainly not going to be my primary focus.  Unfortunately, between these two felt hats and the wonderful knit hats given to me by friends, I have more winter hats than winter to wear them in.

Felted Hat Class: Dawn Edwards Class

I mentioned a couple of times that I took a two-day felted hat class at the Art Loft in Guthrie, OK with visiting felter Dawn Edwards.  I didn't know much at all about felting, and thought that the class would be a great chance to learn about the felting process and about how to make dimensional felted creations.  Dawn's work is beautiful,  here are just a few of the gorgeous hats she brought as examples.

She brought resists for a bunch of the different shapes of hats, and I picked two that seemed fairly complicated in an attempt to learn as many techniques as I could.  We used merino wool roving for the body of the hats, and then could add in whatever extra stuff we wanted.    I brought some hand-dyed silk to incorporate into one of my hats.  Here are a few pictures as I was laying out my first hat.

After laying out came felting,  lots and lots of rolling back and forth in towels and bubble wrap, then squishing and squeezing until it shrank up enough to fit. 

 Finally we started to sculpt it.  First Dawn put the hat on an electric steaming hat block to steam it.  She said this relaxes the fibers and helps it get a nice round shape.  Then we just shaped away.  We all had pinnable synthetic hat blocks for the class so there was something to rest the hats on for sculpting.  Here's my first hat, and me wearing it with Dawn.  I was trying to make the "tree fungus" hat like Dawn's (third picture) and mine came out ok, though not quite as ruffly as I would have liked.  In any event, it will definitely keep my head warm this winter!

I started a second hat in class but I haven't finished it yet (several months later), so I'll have to blog about it in a separate post.  It used a few different techniques so I could learn to make long dangly bits and seed pods.  More on that in the future!

The class was a really great experience.  Dawn was a good teacher, and did a good job helping everybody make their hats.  I definitely learned a ton about felting! 

Felting disaster

Another file of unshared folders I found while sorting last week was the one holding pictures of my recent foray into felting.  A couple years ago my mom won a needle felting machine in some sort of contest and she and I decided we ought to finally give it a try.

Mom made this little piece for a show challenge.  I can't remember what the challenge fabric was, but it's in there somewhere.  The central panel is a silk painting my deceased grandmother made, and my mom used felting to extend it out.  It didn't turn out to be a particularly strong piece, but it's nice.

Mine on the other hand was a spectacular disaster.  I started with some abstract lines, a large piece of brown felt, and the color scheme of gold/brown/fuschia (probably not an easy choice).  After that I pulled out my scraps and started felting away.  Lots of silk and polyester fashion fabrics as well as organzas.  Here are a couple of in progress shots.

And here it is "finished".  My original idea was to square it up, quilt it, and behold, an abstract quilt.  Alas! After finishing the felting, I hung it up and then burst out laughing.  I turned it over to see if that helped (nope).  I therefore promptly rolled it up and stuck it in a drawer.  I can't exactly pinpoint what's wrong; I think there are too many things to count- the composition, the colors, the awful pink clown smile, all of it.  Oh well, at least it was fun figuring out what kinds of things felted well and what didn't.  It took an annoyingly long time though.

I actually think it's a prime candidate for cutting up and incorporating into something else.  Some of the smaller sections are a bit more interesting to my eye, so maybe in future I'll do something with it.  In the meantime my lessons are that a bit more planning is needed, and that I don't forsee this approach taking over my fiber practice.  Oh well, live and learn!

Not sure these funny round things are salvageable, but I like the section to the left.

Linking up with the art ladies over at Nina-Marie's this week!