Felted Sweater Bubbles

Yay! It worked! I was a little worried that I had spaced the bubbles too close together. Since I had already felted a piece of this sweater successfully I thought the only problem would be if there wasn't enough felted wool between the bubbles to make it stable. It took just as long to remove the buttons as it did to elastic them in. I'm thinking of using it for the brim of a hat. I'll back it with another layer of felt and needle felt them together to make it stiffer. Other projects are moving ahead but my plan is to make gingerbread cookies today. It's a dreary day here and I'm hoping the scent of gingerbread will make up for the lack of sun.

Buttons Buttons and More Buttons

I'm finished with my pre Christmas craft shows and have started on a bunch of new things I wanted to try. This technique is one I've done before but never on this scale. It's a way of felting texture into the knit fabric. I'm tying buttons into the wool before felting using the little elastics that are made for corn rowing hair. After felting I'll remove the buttons. Where the button stretched the fabric tight there will be an unfelted bubble. This is most of the front of an extra large man's sweater so it's going to take me a while. I'm curious about how many buttons I'll end up with in there but not curious enough to sit and count them! The small tumbled stones sold for flower arranging work well too. The bigger ones can be too heavy and end up ripping the material. I've got this idea to do some needle felting between the bubbles to add color. I love to layer techniques like that. The other thing I've been ruminating on for quite a while was how to make round felted cords from sweater wool. I'm tired of crocheting hat ties and the felted cord looks a lot nicer. Woolyfabulous, whose work I love, has a tutorial for sale in her shop, http://www.etsy.com/shop/woollyfabulous?ref=ss_profile. I have a strange attraction to reinventing the wheel so I set out to figure it out for myself. My friends were into wet felting so I had a pretty good idea of what might work and it did. But out of respect for Woollyfabulous, I'm not going to post the details. I'm sure her instructions are great so unless you're into reverse engineering like me, save yourself the effort and buy them!

Doodling is a Gateway to Illustration.

This image from the Philbrook Mueum of Art has been making the rounds on Facebook. I think I'm going to print it out and put it on my son's door. I'm beginning to think we'll have another serious artist in the family. The way that art is taught in a Waldorf school rubbed him the wrong way because he already knew what he liked before he got there. I'm not saying it was bad but it was a their way or the highway situation. I was worried that it had turned him off of art permanently. But over the last year or so he's gotten back into it. He has developed the self discipline to set goals for himself and keep working toward them. Our high school offers business courses and he's taking marketing, for which he'll get college credits if he passes the college level final exam. Their current assignment is to develop an advertising campaign. The girls are doing "mens" products like condoms and the boys are doing "feminine products". His is for Tampax and features a young woman swimming in the ocean. The tagline is "Don't be shark bait when you menstruate." His teacher loved it. I think he should submit it to the company.