Cake~Tin Hats: MAKING WET FELTED FLOWERS

I've been felting roses.
A great and meditative lesson in patience
Each flower takes its sweet time to emerge from this
beautiful hand crafted process.

Felting flowers is pure joy and a day spent with four enthusiastic students felting flowers is even better! But first ... just a few hats. This is 'Olivea' below, named after my favorite restaurant in Kingston ... and also because of its beautiful olive colour. (The best thing on the menu at Olivea is the bowl of hot olives!! Quite wonderful to look at and even better to taste.) Speaking of colour, Lesley at Rosehaven Yarns just loaded up the shop with the most gorgeous colours of 19 micron Italian merino fibres from DHG and ... just in case you are wondering (and possibly in need of some fibre) ... resistance IS futile. More felted flower photos below the hats!

'Olivea' ~ cloche wet felted by hand using pure merino wool and silk

'Olivea' ~ A surprise inside

'Olivea' ~ side view

'Water Colour Paint Box' ~ bucket hat ~ merino wool and silk

I must have fedora and trilby on the brain after being so inspired by the work of Zara and Paul at www.innerspirals.com . Their work is wonderful and you can see their hats (and other great stuff) on their website or at their Etsy store where you can order one of their amazing hats on line. Both of the hats shown here were made by me as bucket style hats but someone tried on 'Moss' sideways and all of a sudden with the brim turned up at the back and top pinched in it looked front ways and fedora like (but with a very small brim). In the end, 'Water Colour Paint Box' is quite versatile and can be worn many different ways. 'Moss' on the other hand just looks better as a fedora style hat so I added a band and a felted ball and left it like that.

'Water Colour Paint Box'

'Water Colour Paint Box' ~ when worn sideways looks like a fedora

'Moss' ~ totally inspired by Inner Spiral

'Moss' ~ side view. Made from pure merino wool and silk

OK, now for some more felted flowers!

My demo flower made on a resist pattern just waiting to dry

Demo rose in pink

More demo flowers

Here is a glimpse into the flower felting workshop I taught at Rosehaven Yarn Shop yesterday. In the workshop I wanted to teach my students to make sculptural as well as free form flowers and also how to create and attach a separate stem to a flower. We only had a little time left at the end of the day because we had been busily making several flowers each using a more complicated resist technique involving layers of petals. These flowers don't have stems (although you could certainly add one) because they are like little free standing sculptures. Thanks to the excellent tutorial from Deborah at http://feltersjourney.blogspot.ca/p/tutorials-felting-flowers.html this lovely free form red flower with attached stem was made very quickly and looks so pretty. Deborah is a fantastic felter and so generous about sharing her felting knowledge. The single layer petals are very thin felt which makes them flute and ruffle so nicely at the edges. What's even better is that Deborah's tutorial is available on her blog to everyone so it can be refered to at anytime.

My demo flower with stem ~ based on the Felter's Journey tutorial.

And finally... the students. Why I forgot my camera yesterday I don't know??.. but I did, so the quality of the photos is less that great (I took them with my phone). Nevertheless I had four wonderful students who all worked their tails off with only a short break for lunch. Three of them even drove all the way from Toronto (which is close to a three hour drive - each way) just to take the class. Wow! I certainly hope they are happy with what they learned. They sure made some gorgeous flowers and took away new skills and techniques so they can continue felting flowers at home.

Celia using the resist technique making two at once!

Celia's layout ~ wet and getting ready to flip over for side two

Celia's blue flower ~ great colour and flare

Karen ~ working happily!

Karen felting ~ bravely out of her colour comfort zone


Karen's blue flower sitting in the jelly mold she used to felt it with. This is the most innovative felting tool I have seen to date! It's kind of like the juice lid I use only much bigger. We all had a good laugh when she pulled it out of her bag!