Friday Felt

Felt Vessels

These I made a while ago.  I've brought them out again because the colours were based on flowers I have in the garden right now - snowdrops and crocuses.
I went through a felt phase some years ago and still have all the gear, but it is such a physical process and I'm basically such a lazy crafter that I very rarely feel moved to do anything other than cover a few pebbles these days.
Making felt really needs to be done standing up and calls for lots of energetic pummeling and whilst I do enjoy the scent of the olive oil soap I find I'd really rather be sitting in a comfy chair and stitching.

Silk Rods and Pearls

Just occasionally tidying up can be worthwhile.  I've been sorting through my stash and found a huge bag of undyed silk rods that I'd forgotten I had.  Enough to make something quite large. So I painted up some bondaweb, cut out some heavy duty vilene and set about splitting the rods into their layers.  There are various schools of thought about the best way to do this.  Some people say soak the rods first, others advocate ironing them lightly.  I find that with a little patience they split quite well if you just bend them back and forth for a while.
When I had sufficient split rods I made bondaweb sandwiches with them and the vilene.  Joined the four sides and the base with quilting thread for strength and trimmed the vessel with some strands from a broken pearl necklace.