Felting – alessandrina.com

Felting experiments

WORK IN PROGRESS

I still have a stash of swatches from my teaching days. They range from good to bad, ugly, and do not do this, covered the cork walls in my studio to provide a range of ideas so that each student could draw from them what they wished.
I am not including measurements or fretting about whether photos imply an accurate scale. The collection over time.

More samples in Revisiting fair isle, thread lace, 3D surface potential

Combining yarns with different properties and stitch types while knitting on a fixed number of needles When one yarn felts the other does not: the brown is cotton, the taller stripes on the right are knit in stocking stitch, and the shorter are knit in tuck stitch, both creating dense gathers fair isle, wool and rayon/cotton slub Fair isle on the right, thread lace on the left with floats cut to release the shapes created by the slub yarn

Slip stitch patterning Cutting into felted knit results in stable ribbons of fabric
Shibori techniques

A purchased woven insert joined during the knitting of the piece
Sewing machine involved in the process:
stitched-on crochet after felting, followed by trimming the opening on the reverse.

This mimics a woven fabric “chenille” technique, for sewing how to see https://sewguide.com/faux-chenille-fabric-slashing/

Needle felting
Using the ribber: drop stitch in the dark cotton An attempt at carpet stitch, on Passap (grey), and in turn on Brother (green). The method creates a loose-knit, both versions were lightly felted to compensate, the Brother fabric stayed unacceptably so and will definitely be the only one-off ever Applique using leather glue

Getting seasonal: “happy hollow”

My first “fiesta” ornament with some mood lighting (frame is actually bright embossed aluminum), 4.25-inch square

Back to the birds

In between trying to come up with new knit production items barbed needles can be a form of both entertainment and procrastination.

It must be spring

Inventory in different stages of growth and delopment

The completed hummingbird with embossed metal self frame

More needle felting stage 1

It’s amazing how far tiny bits of fiber go, image is nearly 3 inches at the widest point

Playtime

While procrastinating returning to production knitting for the spring season I found myself inspired by Judy Perez’s Fiesta ornaments and have made my first attempts at metal embossing, adding them as elements in my postcard sized fabric collages, which in turn combine knits, needle felting, needlework techniques, and objects from a stash of accumulated “stuff’. Here are 2 of the results:

Continuing to explore

These are my first two attempts at needle felting on random swatches remaining from machine knit experiments. Both pieces measure “postcard” 4X6 inches. The scale restriction requires thinking in a new way for me, and provides a different way to play with my yarn stash and found objects. It is not clear if any of these techniques will be incorporated into my clothing and accessories, or simply be an end in themselves. Collage lace with some of the same fibers is also on my list of “must try”.

A Felt Tale

The price of changing yarn constantly: my hats are made of plied
multi strands of different color yarns as large forms, then felted.
The yellow reflects the “usual” style: purl side out yields the brimmed
version, knit side out converts to bucket style. The blue is a hat that
shrank unpredictably in width (the hats are sideways knit): a new
“style” is born, its embellishment is needle felted yarn.