The Friday Tutorial

Recycled shawl

I have enough cowls and shawls to last me a lifetime but still can’t stop making them. It is easy and fun and I can do it while watching TV. If I pass a shawl on a jumble sale I try to will myself to walk past it but usually end up buying it anyway. If it is a 100 % nature materials that is, no synthetic stuff for me. I often pimp the ones I buy at jumble sales so here is a tutorial on how to do it - fast and easy!

You need: An old shawl made of 100 % wool, maybe one you have knitted yourself ages ago and never wore or one you bought at the jumble sale last winter (....and never wore). You also need some merino wool.

Spread your shawl out on a synthetic piece of fabric. Make a nice pattern using your wool. I went for a flower pattern using merino wool.

Sprinkle hot soap water over the shawl and “fasten” the wool by using circular movements with your hands.



Roll the shawl and the fabric together and secure it with strings in a few places.
Throw it in the spin dryer for between 3-10 minutes. Check it out often by unrolling it and see if the wool has stuck to the shawl. If you let it stay in the spin dryer for too long you risk having made a kettle holder instead. Nothing wrong with kettle holders I collect them too....but maybe not the item you where going for this time.



Tadah! Done! Now you can embellish it with some embroidery if you like!



Now I leave you for the weekend. Hope you have a creative one!
Jeanette

Getting started

Do you remember my leaf? The one I am making for the Swedisk Art & Craft Society 100 year anniversary next year? I have been thinking about how to create my leaf for quite some time now but on Boxing day I finally got started. I decided to go for wet felting and the "working name" is Tree of Life. I needed to make both a front and a backside for the leaf.



Placing the wool on the prefelted fabric



Wetting it down with hot soap water



Hanging it to dry. The red is the front side and the pink is the backside...I think. ....So far...

 I plan to add needle felting and embroidery to it as well and probably some text and photos in decoupage. It was a relief to finally get going instead of just thinking about it. Sometimes I am SO very hard on myself and everything has to be perfect at once. That sort of stops me from getting started at all in fear of it ending up all wrong. Which is extremely silly really because I can always make another piece if I am not satisfied with the first one....

The leaf has to be ready at the end of February so for once I am not making a last minute project...

Take care
Jeanette

The Friday Tutorial

Wrist warmers

Last winter in Sweden was cold, very cold and mittens, warm sweaters and long johns were sold out in all the shops. I bought the last pair of long johns in one of the shops and believe me there was nearly a fight over them…..It was even cold indoors. Wrist warmers became a great way of keeping warm when I had to sit still at my office and the heater had gone to heater heaven warming the wings of the angels instead of my cold feet. So this year I am going to be prepared. I have already made two pair of mittens and some wrist warmers. It is fun and fast and makes a nice gift too.

The best of it all is that I get to use the beautiful wool sweater that my husband accidentally machine washed but you can use felt as well. You can embellish it with basically anything that you find beautiful. I used fabric, embroidery yarn, glass beads, vintage lace and did some needle felting.



This is how you do it:
Cut two pieces of felt that fits around your wrist. Pimp them - get wild and crazy if you like. Sew them together – done!



If you have an old and shrunken sweater ( thanks to your hubby maybe) it is even faster. Cut of the last 20 centimeters of the arms of the sweater, embellish – done!

Here is some that I have made.

Now I leave you for the weekend. Hope you have a creative one!
Jeanette

Shrink shrank shrunk

First I threw them in the wash machine 40 degrees C for 40 minutes. They came out looking like hockey goalkeeper gloves. So back in the wash machine they went, this time in 60 degrees. After 60 minutes of restless waiting I opened the machine and out came a pair of Ronald Mc Donald gloves!!! They where felted but still too big and one mitten was a mysteriously 5 cm longer than the other. WTF? This demanded some serious action so I put one mitten on top of the other, cut of the unnecessary pieces with a scissor and sew the mitten together again on my sewing machine. Then I hand felted them in the sink for a while but the just wouldn’t shrink so I threw them in the spin dryer. After 20 minutes in the spin dryer I was down to a pair of mittens that might not have a perfect fit but at least was wearable.

The most fun part, embroidery and other embellishments will have to wait for the weekend. Then I just might start on a new pair too but knit them two sizes smaller and go for 60 degrees at once.

Take care

Jeanette

A mitten or a sock?

Today I finished the first mitten. Lets hope it shrinks as it is supposed to when I throw it in the wash machine. It is made of a 100 % wool so I guess it will felt but otherwise I will have to use it as a sock.....ha,ha!

Take care
Jeanette

Guitar, tennis racket or wings?

Actually it is none of the above. It is a leaf.

The Swedish Art & Craft Society is celebrating its 100 year anniversary next year by arranging a huge exhibition at Liljevalchs in Stockholm. 2000 crafters from all over Sweden are making one leaf each, 100 trees in total with 20 leafs on each one. The exhibition is called “Can you see the leaves for all the trees".

When the exhibition is over there will be an auction where the leaves will be sold to the highest bidder. All the money raised will be given to different charity organizations.

You can chose whatever technique you like for covering the wooden frame just as long as it is a reflection of who you are as a crafter. I am thinking about felting and embroidery with a touch of metal craft and mixed media.

Yep, as a crafter I have a split personality. Ha,ha!

Take care

Jeanette

A fast delivery

The yarn arrived today, five soft red balls of wool together with three beautiful cards that Maria makes herself and also sells in her web shop. I want to start knitting on the cowl right away but think I have to finish this project first.

I know it looks like I am knitting for a troll or an ogre but they actually are meant for me! I am felting them in the wash machine and hopefully they don’t come out like mittens for midgets instead. That’s the fun part about felting though. You can never be quite certain of the outcome.

Take care

Jeanette

Hockey and wool

I had a good weekend although it started with a scare. I had to spend Friday afternoon at the emergency room with my eldest who fell of a horse. Luckily it was only a concussion. On Saturday I went to a hockey game, my very first IRL. It was more fun than I expected, well not the game as much as the intermission  rock music and the cheering. Even the photographers wore a helmet!

On Sunday I made a tiny crown out of wool. Or that was what it was meant to look like…..I am not really satisfied though ….but it’s a kind of prototype for a bigger one that I want to build.

I started on some Christmas presents in wet felting. These are supposed to keep your butt warm if you are on an outdoor picnic in the wintertime. I am going to add some needle felting and embroidery too.

 I added four more chairs to my champagne cork chair collection. Making them is addictive. Wish I could say that I had some champagne too but unfortunately these where corks that I saved from my daughters graduation in june…..

Take care

Jeanette

We Felt United 2011

Glowing Grass

This is my entry in the We Felt United event that took place on Oktober 1st celebrating the 3rd International Day of Felt.The colors this year was red-purple-blue. I call my entry Glowing Grass and it is inspired by an old folklore tradition in Sweden to make hanging grass crowns for weddings and festivities.

The motto for Felt United is:

Felt - intertwined, bound together, forever as one - United

and when I was felting this piece I felt both united with all the fab felters out there but also united with my Swedish roots.

Take care

Jeanette

Not according to plan

Today was my day off. I had plans for this day. I was going to finish the FeltUnited project, take my camera for a walk in the woods in the beautiful autumn weather and if I still had time to spare I wanted to finish my granny square cowl too. Instead I woke up with the cold from hell! My head feels like it’s filled with cotton and is going to explode any minute and I am coughing and sneezing so badly.

I tried to do some felting anyway but every time I sneeze, which is about once every ten seconds, I send the locks of wool dancing to the floor and have to begin all over again. Now I am giving up and heading for the sofa. I sent my daughter to the shop for a serious amount of chocolate. An old romantic movie and some chocolate are bound to make me feel better.

Take care

Jeanette

Frantic felting

Yesterday evening it hit me big time, Saturday is October the 1: st, the We Felt United event and I wasn`t even started on my project yet. It was the same thing last year but then due to the fact that I didn’t know that such a thing existed until a few days before the event actually took place. This year everything would be so different, I would be so much more prepared… I even wrote it in my new years resolutions! It is not lack of ideas, oh no, it is lack of willpower. The better half of me ( the schoolmarm half) has been telling me for ages that I should get started but it’s like she is speaking klingon – I just don’t seem to understand what she is saying. I am so wasted!

After a bit of moaning I decided I had two options, quit the whole thing or get started. I opted for get started and I actually already had a sort of sketch in my head inspired by this book.

Since the event is worldwide I wanted to do something that was traditionally Swedish. The book is about old folklore grass crowns but what if you translated that into wool…..I could use locks of wool resembling grass ….I felt a deep surge of inspiration and hit the kitchen sink.

I needed two circular frames and decided to use wire that I covered with wool, felted in the sink and then gave a circular shape.  It turned out great and my head filled with ideas of all kind of stuff I could use the same technique for. I had to put them on hold though and get started on the “grass” which turned out to be both tedious and boring.



21 down and 39 to go...

I had made a quick calculation before I started that I needed about 50-60 felted “straws” and believe me, the only thing that kept me going was the thoughts on how I would pimp the finished crown with rowanberries, rose hips and scraps of metal…. I am not there yet….but I will keep you posted.

Take care

Jeanette