November 3, 2010

Thanksgiving Tree & Needle-Felting

This day at MOPS was "Share Your Wares" with tables set up around the room perimeter for anyone wanting to display/sell whatever it is they do. So I set up a table with all the variety of felting I do - from my sculpted people, landscape pictures, purses, hats, slippers, etc ... along with selling my cookbook.

I also did the Devotional for the day, showing one of my Thanksgiving Tree posters from a past Thanksgiving, and talking about it -

I often get frustrated at the Thanksgiving table when I ask what people are thankful for. Usually someone says something silly and then everyone else does. So now on a large piece of paper I draw a tree, with lots of branches and no leaves, to hang on the wall. I cut a variety of leaves from colored construction paper and leave them sit on a counter with a pen and glue stick. If this is done a week or so before Thanksgiving everyone who comes to our house can write something they're thankful for on a leaf and glue it on the tree. Then by Thanksgiving, we've had time to think beyond tangibles like food, family, God, friends, pets etc to intangibles like Truth, Love, integrity and then beyond to firemen, police, doctors ...


The rest of the time I sat felting wool flowers to go in a vase I made from 'material' I made with my needle-felting machine. The vase's foundation is craft felt with dyed cheesecloth needled on - the design is created by needling from the back and the front. Needling from the back forces the black felt color to the front or whatever colored felt piece I put on the back. I added beanbag pellets in the vase as a weight. At home I'd wet felted green wool around pipe-cleaners, then I could just needle the flowers to them.


I'd put together some needle-felting kits to sell too. The purses I was selling used fleece material as their foundation material I used their design as the guide for machine felting yarn on for more textile interest, creating a whole new fabric. Some had purse handles made from braiding fleece strips and yarn together, sewn on. Some smaller purses had zipper closures.
Fleece/Yarn machine felted purse (holding my knitting)

Machine needle-felted material from yarn on craft felt - made into zippered purse

One of the fleece foundational designs with yarns to embed by machine felting
One of the finished fleece machine felted purses
Needle-felted flower added to a wet-felt hat with crocheted edging

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