Here comes the sun

 My latest idea was to make a conjoined sun and moon face with needle felting.  I sketched out my ideas and got going.

For the suns rays I cut out two different shapes from thick felt to make a sort of stencil to felt into. This makes it much easier to make consistent shapes. Cheeks were formed from circles added and felted over to join in.

I started to make a moon and realised the overlapping noses posed a logistical problem. I was very happy with the nose I had made for the sun and did not want to spoil this so decided to make the sun on its own and the moon with maybe some stars and a night sky. I focused on the sun first , made more rays and lined the eyes for dramatic effect. The lips were formed onto a raised area of the mouth.

Some rosy cheeks finished off her look (it’s hot work being a celestial being) and now time to attach the rays.

Nearly done.

And finished.

Now to start sorting the moon.

Passion flower

I have been busy making a Passion flower. Have been wanting to make one ever since I got the book Felting fabulous flowers by Gillian Harris. I have made a few of the projects from this small book which has lots of information on techniques and step by step flower projects. I got mine on Amazon uk, link below.

Felting Fabulous Flowers

It’s an awesome book and I have gone back to it many times in the two years I have had it. The only problem for me is I use acrylic fibre which doesn’t wet felt. The book is a mixture of wet and needle felt so I adapt where I need to.

I made my prefelt by needlefelting. In the book wool is used so she makes prefelt by wetfelting, I can’t do this with acrylic fibre so I set up an audio book and just stab away at my felting mat which is covered in fibres. I made extra so I could make stamens by cutting them 2mm thick from a rectangle of felt. 

Two problems occurred. 

Firstly upon ironing the petals I had cut out from the prefelt they became too flimsy and see through. I decided to attach them to another layer for structure and strength. This gave me more work to do but was worth it as the petals are now pleasingly substantial. 

                           Two layers of prefelt needled together.

The second problem was the stamens. When cut they became very delicate and broke in places. As you cannot just roll damp soapy acrylic fibres in your hands I had to find a new way to make a long strong stamen.

I decided to use a method I have used before to create lengths of fibre. This involves wrapping fibre around a long thin bbq skewer and stabbing around the skewer carefully to join the fibres together( be careful not to break your needle on the wood). When it’s felted push it off the skewer. You will be able to stretch it slightly to get a thinner rope. I then dipped the whole length in starch and left to dry. 

I joined the two sets of petals by adding more fibre in the centre . I then cut up the stamens to 4mm and coloured them with blue and purple sharpie pens. I then felted the stamens around the centre. On top of this I felted a green circle with an aubergine ring.  

I then followed instructions to make the five and three pronged stamens, these were glued in place. A few touch ups where the purple hadn’t taken and done. 

Vegan needle felting 3

It’s been all about the vegan needle felted flowers recently, It started with making a sunflower 🌻 which took forever as there were so many individual petals. I then ironed them (tentively as I thought the acrylic fibre might melt) It didn’t ,it just turned into a flatter denser felt...result!! The middle was a massive pile of fibres which I felted down so it was smooth but still spongy. I then made another one with different tones of yellow in it.

The next flower was a poppy where I also ironed the petals this made them lovely and flat and dense, usually acrylic fibre is kind of fuzzy like stuffing Trouble is ironing the felt made it difficult to give it any shape so I made a cup of fibre underneath to give me something to push against whilst shaping the petals. I made the poppy with 5 petals underneath and 4 on top, few more than a real poppy but looks lusher. I used eyelash yarn to make the stamen’s which I hand sewed onto the centre of the flower.

The next flower was an experiment mixing colours on the petals to give an ombré effect

Today I finished making a multicoloured Zinnia, so many petals! Was worried it would be too flat if ironed the petals so this flower shows how “pouffy” the acrylic fibre is. Some of the colours I mixed myself using two dog slicker brushes to comb two colours together. Pretty pleased how the colours turned out.  

  

Vegan needle felting 2

Hi it's been a long time since I posted. And I've been busy needle felting. Not with bamboo fibres which make hard mean 3D items but with a new fibre called Aclaine from Japan. A company called Hamanaka is producing the 100% acrylics fibre for felting which means it is vegan!!!
http://hamanaka-jp-crafts.com/items/feltwool/aclaine.html

I get mine from an etsy shop called SweetPeaDolls, they are super helpful, they are what's called Embassadors for Aclaine fibre which basically means they sell it in England.

https://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/SweetPeaDolls?ref=l2-shop-header-avatar
It comes in a wide range of colours, mainly pretty pastels and fresh bright colours. It felts really well to itself and makes delightfully spongy soft items. It is not so good for thin detail such as stems as the fibres seem short and it retains a lot of air not unlike wadding. I am currently experimenting with it to see what it can do and have made a few flowers, a hamster and some bird brooches.

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The roses were made by creating a sheet of felt first by laying it over a sponge and needling it with the clover 5 needle tool, when doing this it is important to lift the felt frequently so it doesn't stick to the foam. This sheet was then cut into two base pieces per flower and a wavy long strip which I coiled and attached from the middle outwards. This technique came from a lovely new book called Felting fabulous flowers which I got from Amazon. The pansys were also from this book.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1909397393/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Finished pizza

Finished making the pizza tonight,decided to just use enough for a slice and save the rest. I used a sundried tomato sauce,nut cheese and marinated mushrooms,all recipes in Going Raw by Judita Wignall.next time I will add some greens,mainly for aesthetics as the pizza was less than exciting to look at,but oh the taste!!! The seed/nut cheese was creamy,the base and veggies crunchy and the tomato sauce tangy,what a lovely mix of flavours and textures. Next time I make the base I will make mini round pizzas or maybe lunchbox shaped?! 

This book is brilliant if you are new to raw,it has lots of detailed instructions such as how to sprout seeds,make nut cheeses,raw vegan versions of pizza,burgers,chilli and spaghetti bolognese decadent puddings,fermented foods,wraps,nut milks,smoothies even raw choc chip cookies and an amazing chocolate cherry cheesecake,if I wasn't full of pizza this book would make me seriously hungry!!!

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Dehydrated pizza and courgette crisps

Hi,I have been busy playing in my kitchen yesterday I have wanted to make a dehydrated pizza for ages but never got round to it.I used sprouted kamut grain as the base for my pizza.

This is kamut. I soaked it overnight and sprouted it for 3 days until it had grown tails the length of the seed,Rinsing the seeds 3 times a day and allowing to drain.

Above is the type of sprouting jar I use(this one has buckwheat in it) they have a mesh lid for easy drainage. I got mine from Amazon,they are by Vogel (biosnacky) and come in a pack of two,ideal for rotating your sprouting so you always have something on the go.i usually sprout alfalfa. This is the first time I have sprouted grains and I am very happy with how it went.

The recipe for the pizza was from Going Raw by Judita Wignall, basically it involves blending up the sprouted kamut with water, oil and a binder ,I changed the recipe to use chi seeds and avocado oil as that's what I had.I also added sundried tomatoes for extra flavour. I found the grains hard to process in my food processor so didn't get such a pleasing dough as in the book, I also had to add extra water as my poor(cheaply) blender wasn't up to the job so it was a little soggy. I spread the dough on a non stick sheet and dehydrated it at 115*c overnight.

It turned out super crunchy! Have tried a bit and it's nutty and slightly chewy,can't wait to make a sauce and add toppings. I also made seed and nut cheese yesterday , this was made by blending various seeds and walnuts adding water,onion powder,nutritional yeast and one probiotic tablet to help it ferment,you then leave on the work surface for several hours.

The third thing I made to make good use go the dehydrater was courgette crisps,I cut them on my spirilizer massaged some oil into them and flavoured with lemon juice,chilli and ginger.I then dehydrated these overnight.they shrunk considerably,I think next time I will slice them thicker,lovely and crispy though!!! 

Spiralized courgette 

Ready to dehydrate,the seeds fell off whilst massaging in the oil :(

Light crispy courgette (crispettes!)

So many trays to wash up!!!!

Pizza for tea and crisps for me!

Will post later when made toppings.

Vegan felting

One of the things that stopped me going fully vegan was my love of needle felting. I was very sad about the idea that I would never play with fibres and colour combined again but didn't want to be a hypocrite. Enter the wonderful internet!!! I found out from google searching that you can felt with plant and synthetic fibres!!!! I had always thought that this wasn't possible if the fibres weren't some kind of wool.

I have the post by mythillogical of the myths and fabrications blog http://mythillogical.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/bamboozledexperiments-in-bamboo-fibre.html to thank for pointing me in the direction of world of wool world of wool website who seem to be the only company selling ready dyed bamboo,most company's sell it white,it felts when needle felted,I cannot vouch for wet felting as I don't do it. It is a different texture to wool,shinier and slippery and slightly harder to get to felt,it doesn't seem to mesh quite as well as wool fibres but still felts,I find it best to rough it up a little first by carding it between my dog brush carders!!!

This also makes it possible to mix colours together,the colours from world of wool are quite bright so if you like a more subtle palette mixing is the way to go. I have been experimenting with mixing mid tones to my main colours and got some beautiful orangey pinky colours. 

My next test would be to use the fibres in a design. I drew out a mandala pattern and then hit a snag.....how to transfer the design to felt? You can't draw on felt to mark where you want the lines of your design...so I decided to stitch the areas of the design in running stitch and hopefully be able to pull them out later.

I then started filling in the colours and was pleasantly surprised how well they took to the background felt.in some places the background felt was starting to warp a little so I kept it in the embroidery frame for stability.i used my Janome Embellisher to smooth out the fibres but didn't linger to long in one spot as I am aware that the acrylic prefelt background is not that robust.

Very happy with the results so far and extremely happy to be needle felting with totally vegan fibres!!!i am embroidering gold lures thread around the coloured areas,this is how far I've got at the moment.

Guess what just got delivered? More felty goodness from world of wool,black and white bamboo so I can mix tones as well as colour and an interesting fibre called super right trilobal nylon rainbow top. It's much harder to felt and makes a fluffy mess everywhere but is so shiny and sparkly,I think it will make lovely highlights to a felted piece.

It's the rectangular sample at the bottom. Am excited about all these new fibres and am off to mix some new colours.