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.
