I found an old children's lamp on a fleamarket in France a while ago, and after removing the original embroidered cotton shade, was left with a simple box shaped frame. I decided to make 4 panels of felt to cover it, rather than a long piece to wrap round, as I was concerned about keeping it straight.
The panels are made of just two fairly thin layers of natural cream merino, to keep it translucent. Between the 2 layers I sandwiched some thin birch twigs from the garden. I added a few natural wool curly locks as a final decoration. I felted this gently, with just a little fulling, until the panels were firm and strong enough.
After drying, I stitched the panels onto the frame using invisible nylon thread. Much the worst part - I hate sewing with this stuff as it constantly slips out of the needle!
I like the delicate natural, translucent quality of the shade, and it looks particularly good when lit up.
Sometimes I think that the best felt is in natural colours, with natural found objects incorporated. A memory perhaps of when it was on the back of a sheep, with twigs caught in it!
So natural colour and textures. Pretty felted shade.
ReplyDeleteThank you so much Terriea! I notice that you often use natural colours, especially cream, and incorporate natural materials and dyes in your felt - and you are certainly one of my inspirations.
DeleteThat looks really nice :) I love naturals too. I've trapped a few thing between wool layers, dried bamboo was probably the most successful, dandelion seeds probably the least! It's funny you say that about the twigs caught on the sheep, I even keep all the VM from fleece and especially alpaca to incorporate back into felt :)
ReplyDeleteThank you Zed! Yes I think I'll experiment a bit more with trapping things. Must confess I had to look VM up but now I understand :-)
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