I've been diligently working. This weekend I felted things. First I prefelted my entrelac bag and then I stitched in the casing to hold the spring-frame closure--this technique worked really well and I'm glad I did it this way. Sewing the casing to the unflattened knitting would have been a nightmare. I then tossed it into the washer and drier again and it fulled up very nicely. Here it is, still damp, with the twisted and felted handle. Once it's dry I'll assemble it.
Then I felted two wool sweaters, kindly given to me by Myrna in Wisconsin. I'd mentioned I thought I'd check the resale shops up there for wool (since there doesn't seem to be any down this way). She had found these at similar shops and gotten them to unravel and reuse the wool (she's much more dedicated that I am!). Instead she gave them to me to play with.
I threw all the wool into the washer and washed it on hot--I'd never felted in the washer before and it worked okay. This sweater gave off a lot of fuzz (which I dutifully saved for needle felting!). I should have put something on the sweaters for scale--but they went from women's size to small child size. Each felted differently--in the top sweater the beige wool didn't felt too much, but the colored did. In the bottom sweater, the beige fulled tightly but the blue in the collar and cuffs didn't and still retains some of it's stretch. I'm not sure what I plan to do with them--I just kept seeing things using fulled sweaters (the proper term) and wanted to try it. Now that I have my sweaters, the ideas have fled. I'm sure they'll return sometime.
As I was packing for vacation, I ran across this ufo. I designed and stitched a bunch of these cutwork ornaments, must have been a couple of years ago because I couldn't find a previous blogpost about them. I had this one drawn onto the fabric and the thread with it. I'd just barely begun to stitch the buttons on the snowman when I stopped. Since it was small, I tucked it into my bag and actually made a lot of progress while in Wisconsin. Here it is, all stitched, with the lining, backing and cotton batting to finish.
I began a new entrelac bag since we've been home. This one is smaller than the first, done with a blended yarn which may not felt as tightly. I'm using one colorway of the yarn (I forgot the ball band today, sorry) and letting the colors flow. Each "square" is 8 stitches picked up and 64 knit--takes about 15 minutes. A nice project for small corners of time.I also picked up my black Oriental canvas design. It took me all my stitching time Saturday morning to do two leaves. Since my previous post I've also done most of one of the camellias. But, hey, progress is progress.
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