Wet Felting Experimenting

I wanted to experiment with holes and shapes. I found a blog post which I tried to follow but it was in Russian and didn't translate well into English. There were photos but some stages were missed out. So here goes. I layered up three lots of felt over a piece of tulle. I decided to use different colours so I could see what was what in the end product.

Next I wet the middles with warm soapy water. Leaving a raw edge. (Easier said than done!)

Next step was to cut out some shapes from the wet section. Again, this isn't as easy as it lools.

Layer it all up using resists between the layers and then cover the whole piece. Again I used a different colour.

Wet it and start the felting process.

And once felted this is what I ended up with. The light yellow on the top didn't felt to anything and it also fell off the piece of tulle. So I took it off and then carefully stuffed some cloths through the holes and between the layers and left it to dry over night.

And this is it unstuffed this morning.

I was impressed how the brighter yellow layer underneath held its shape too.

And from another angle. You can see the brighter yellow through the top holes and also the orange which is the base.

However, one thing I did realise when I'd finished was that I stacked it up the wrong way round, which is why the top layer didn't stick to anything, so back to the drawing board for another try.

This time I didn't bother to leave a raw edge because it was too much faffing and I also wanted to felt these layers more.

Next I stacked it the complete opposite to how I did the first one, then covered the top with a four layers of merino wool and felted the whole piece, stuffed it with fabrics and left it to dry over night.

And this is what I ended up with. It's still not quite right as the cut out pieces are still a bit ragged, but at least I didn't lose any layers this time!

As I had quite a big rim on one side, I decided to cut some holes to see how that went, again I think I should have soaped them more to finish off the edges better.

Again I was impressed at how each of the inside layers stands up. Here you can see the light blue on top, then the bright blue and the dark blue underneath and none of these layers are touching anything, they are all free standing inside the piece.

And it's also held it's dome shape.

Not bad for a second effort, will keep trying as once I'd finished I wasn't really sure why I needed the tulle in the first place, unless it's to provide a bit of stabilty to help the inside pieces stand alone.

Also had I have done it all in one colour, you wouldn't see where the bottom joins the top layer, but I needed to do it like this to see what ended up where!!!