The BIG Craft Event - Lincolnshire Showground

Today I had a day out at the Big Craft Event held at the Lincolnshire Showground.

I bought some wool felting bundles from this stall but I have no idea what it was called as there is no banner or name and nothing on or in the bag.

More stalls and it was actually quite busy.

Lots of handmade Christmas things.

And this was the other end of the hall.

There were also sewing machines demo's too.

Needle & Thread were running all the workshops. 

These were all the 1 hour taster workshops on offer, most of them had sold out, but I was booked on to the needle felting santa with Robyn Smith.

Pinched this photo from Needle and Thread FB page!!

This is where I got to yesterday as the sun was really really bright and I picked up the pale pink instead of the white and so he left the show with a pale pink beard, so I pulled it out.

A needle felting workshop in progress with Robyn.

Lots of workshops going on at the same time.

This is Sally (stood up on the left) who owns Needle and Thread and organised the workshops. I did go and say hi to her as I took a workshop at her studio earlier this year and I am booked onto one next year.

And you can't go all that way without buying anything can you, so this is what I bought.

Close up of the locks from the stall I don't know the name of!!

Silk sari ribbon waste from Robyn's stall.

And silk tops, also from Robyn's stall.

And I bought this little guy for my mum for Christmas as she is very into ducks at the moment.

His body is filled with something heavy as he is a door stop.

I think (hope) she will love him. If not, I can always keep him.

And I finished him this morning.

Wet Felting Incorporating Other Materials

So moving on from my sample piece, I decided to go for it. This time I did things slightly differently, hopefully learning from the first piece. I laid out the materials as above. I just kept going until I was happy with how it looked as I wasn't actually aiming to make anything from the finished piece.

This is what I ended up with once I I'd finished felting and shrinking it. I was much happier with what happened this time, however, it's not dry yet!

This is the piece of silk fabric that all puckered up with a piece of the silk throw underneath.

This is another piece of farbic, not sure what it is, some sort of polyester or viscose, but it puckered up nicely too.

And this is the piece of cotton fabric, again love how it's puckered and grabbed the other fibres.

This is the silk throwster waste.

This is the silk spectrum, it reminds me of slub, but thicker.

This is the silk throwster dyed waste.

I also used some dyed silk tops and some angelina fibres.

All the above photos were taken whilst it was still wet.

This is how it looks now it's fully dried and I'm really pleased with it.

This is a close up of the cotton scrim, love how it's all puckered up.

This is a close up of the silk, again it puckered up really nicely and has left a fabulous texture.

This is the piece of viscose/polyester and it's puckered up lovely too.

The green, blue and patch of purple is the silk throwster waste.

This has the silk spectrum clump middle left, the darker patch, and it's quite soft considering what it starts off as.

The purple area is silk tops and there is also some angelina fibre in there too.

I not only love the end product, but really enjoyed the process.

Comfort Doll

This is a Barb doll, otherwise known as a comfort doll.  Mine is a lot smaller than Barb's as it's only my first one and I had to do the needle felting by hand and Barb has a fancy embellisher to do it for her.  I think the face may be a little bit too big, but I didn't have any smaller face molds for the clay.  I used black, but coated it with a layer of micaceous iron oxide before baking in order to take the perfect pearls.  I used silk rods, merino wool tops, silk waste and bamboo wool to needle felt into the piece of felt.  I then cut out a random shape.  Using my sewing machine I attached another piece of felt to the back leaving an opening to put stuffing in.  Once stuffed, I sewed the hole up.  I glued the bamboo hair to the clay head and then glued the head to the body.