Wet felted, wool painting.

Debbie:: Don't read this until after the 25th if you want your wall hanging to be a surprise!

:::

Hello my lovelies. How are you doing? All ready for Christmas? Is the house decorated, the pantry full and the gifts wrapped?

Well I think I could say yes to most of those questions, still a couple of things left to wrap but the job I'm most pleased about finishing is my felt wall hanging, for the very, lovely Debbie.

A rather long one this one. Well longer than I've ever contemplated before. In fact Wonderful Man  had to help me dismantle my work table in the attic and bring it down to the kitchen where we reassembled it end to end with our dining table to give me a work space long enough.

And this is how it ended. Work table dismantled once more and reassembled back in the attic so that I could embroider and embellish in my usual surroundings. Wet felting is an untidy business, well it is the way I do it. I think the whole family is happier when I'm back in the attic, lol.



One of the most difficult parts of this commission was to try and work out how much the felt would shrink. Not enough and I would have to trim it to size, which in turn would mean losing the lovely natural wiggly edges.

Too much and the piece would be too small and I'd have to start over again! God forbid! It took me about seven hours to lay out the Merino wool for this one and then I wasn't sure about it so left it overnight and came back to it the next morning with fresh eyes.



Next what seems like an afternoon of soapy water and much vigorous rolling and roughing up.

Then I have a day or two's break while the felt is left to dry naturally.

Out comes the sewing machine next and my box or should I say boxes of threads. Tricky is a nice word to describe how difficult it was at times to manoeuvre this around under my domestic sewing machine. There are other words but tricky is the one we'll use today.

Hand embroidery and scrummy sparkly bits are next. You can't beat a little bit of twinkle here and there.

One of the good parts follows. Slip stitching the backing fabric and casing onto the reverse. I luuuuurve slip stitching.

Finally, balancing on a chair to fit all of its 62 inches into the viewfinder.

Gloriously happy!

That's how it makes me feel to look at it finished and ready to be carefully wrapped. It's at this point that I remember how much I enjoyed every single moment of making it.

Merry Christmas to you all

and

I hope you'll join me in 2013 to share in each others creativity.

Love Fi x