I Felt . . .

exhilarated, exhausted, and thoroughly drenched at the end of my full-day wet-felting workshop with Jilly Gully from Outback Fibers. I took an online felting class at Joggles a while back and was pretty disappointed with my samples, so I decided that felting is probably better learned in a live class. Sure enough, I found out that I had been laying the wool roving on too thickly, using the wrong kind of "netting," and that the quality of materials makes a huge difference in the outcome.

Jill had plenty of other tips to help improve my felting, and she has the most beautiful wool and silk roving, dyed silk hankies, and something called Felbi prefelt which is wonderful to work with.

I was off yesterday and so played some more. I used my old, cheap wool from Jo Ann Fabrics for the first piece I felted (no pic here), and it was a big disappointment--the fibers just didn't seem to felt well, and the piece was thicker than I had hoped for. For the next two pieces (below), I used the wool & silk from Outback, and created both pieces on a Felbi prefelt base. They felted like a dream, and I think the pieces came out very nicely. I'm anxious to do something with them; I want to try stitching on a piece to see how that feels and works.