458x - Wooly Sheep Sweater
Design by Caroline Perisho Playful wooly sweater to show the world you love sheep. Tussock 10 ply from Naturally and Puddel from Aurora.
226 - Flower Eyelet Afghan
Design by Eugen Beugler A simple flower eyelet pattern is combined with traditional basket-weave for this attractive afghan. Worsted wt, shown in Mountain Goat from Mountain Colors.
MAKING FACES: Using Wet and Dry Felting Methods by Patricia Spark.
The felting needle is a great aid to the hand feltmaker. By combining this tool with traditional felting techniques, you can greatly increase the creative potential of this medium. The needle has small notches along its edges which push fiber along to intermix with the fiber lying below it. Thus, the fibers are tangled together creating felt, without the need for soap or water! With the needle you can be very precise, attaching small amounts of fiber just where you'dlike them to be. Three-dimensional shapes can easily be added to a surface, increasing the potential for sculptural form. The possibilities are endless.
In this book, Pat Spark shows how to use the needle to create faces. By combining the sculptural possibilities of the felting needle with traditional felting, you can add faces to any of your favorite felt forms. Don't you want a smiling vase or a winking pair of boots!
63 pages, softcover, spiralbound.
'2nd Edition' WATERCOLOR FELT WORKBOOK: A Guide to Making Pictorial Felts . . . by Patricia Spark.
This workbook is intended to help you learn the technique developed by Pat Spark, called "Watercolor Felt". Ms. Spark calls her method by this name because she uses concepts from painting, and applies those concepts to feltmaking. The result is felts that are visually similar to watercolors, but which are totally made of dyed fiber. There is no actual painting involved, unless you consider the placement of each individual colored fiber as "painting" with the fiber. The process involves the use of both the traditional, wet felting method and needle felting, also known as the dry felting method. Following Ms. Spark’s instructions with these two felting methods, you will be able to create your own pictorial felts. Don’t know how to draw? Don’t worry; Ms. Spark has included methods for working from photographs to create your images. The workbook is divided into two sections. Section One describes basic felting information. Section Two is a series of samplers that will take you step by step through the various needle felting and wet felting methods you will need for doing the process. The samplers are sequential, with each one building upon the techniques of the last so that you will methodically gain the expertise needed to make the pictorial felts. All pictures and illustrations are in black and white with 4 pages of colored pictures showing the samplers you will make with a photograph of the flower or leaves at the top of the page and the finished felt piece at the bottom of the page.
56 pages, softcover/spiralbound, 8 1/2" x 11"
Tapestry Weaving by Kirsten Glasbrook
Even if the modernistic samples and bright, primary colors in this book are not your favorite decorating style, the clear how-to instructions give you confidence to interpret the techniques into your own preferred designs. Basic methods are demonstrated through large, color photographs. All the tapestries in this book were woven on simple, rectangular frames, and you can even adapt an old picture frame for this purpose, and use rug yarn for the weft. (A valuable hint to someone who wants to try the skill before investing a lot of money in a loom.) From a solitary heart to circles, simple landscapes then progress on to a labyrinth and incredibly detailed side-woven panels. This book is a wealth of knowledge on the subject of weaving.
96 pages, softcover, 8 1/2" x 11 1/2", color throughout
Line in Tapestry by Kathe Todd-Hooker
82 pages, spiralbound softcover, 8 1/2" x 11"
Shaped Tapestry by Kathe Todd-Hooker
This book is filled with information about weaving tapestries "outside-the-box." By this we mean, non-rectangular tapestries. Such tapestries can be shaped and lie flat on the wall or they can be 3-dimensional. There are many ways to weave a non-rectangular tapestry: shaping the loom itself, using weave structures that cause the weaving to become shaped, and using scaffolds and other devices to hold areas of warp that are then manipulated into 3-dimensional shapes when the weaving is finished. Naturally, these types of processes require some special finishing techniques, and this book covers those as well. If you wan a truly creative approach to this centuries old medium, this is the book for you.
Contemporary Tapestry by Harriet Tidball
46 pages, softcover, 8 1/2" x 11"
Felt Frenzy: 26 Projects for all Forms of FELTING, by Heather Brack and Shannon Okey
This is not your ordinary felting book! Felt Frenzy explores all the major techniques of felt making, from knit-and-shrink to wet felting, needlefelting, and “recycled felting”—turning salvaged wool sweaters into useful felt pieces—plus ways to combine techniques for creative and unique results.
Designed with the absolute beginner in mind, Felt Frenzy is packed with 26 projects and photographs of more than 50 before-and-after felted yarn combinations so readers can easily customize patterns with substitutions of their choice. You’ll find instructions for the ever-popular felted bag, but it doesn’t stop there—learn to make felted flowers, hats, jackets, scarves, wool sneakers, even a nuno felted skirt. As an added bonus, you’ll find “design ideas” scattered throughout the book to give your projects an extra creative boost; these suggestions help integrate felt into other fiber arts, from embroidery to shibori.
Learn all about fiber types, tools for getting started, and the four major techniques needed to create the projects in the book. Armed with plenty of information and the authors’ can-do spirit, any crafter can add felting to her repertoire with Felt Frenzy!
Paperbound, 8½ x 9, 128 pages; 60 photographs, 3 charts, 10 schematics
FELTMAKING and WOOL MAGIC: Contemporary Techniques and Beautiful Projects, by Jorie Johnson
After studying textile design in both the USA and Finland, author Jorie Johnson was introduced to the felt making process in 1977 when she was first taught Scandinavian felt boot-making. She was immediately struck by felt’s amazing properties and possibilities. Through this book, Felt Making and Wool Magic, you will see that Jorie’s approach to felt making is clearly creative as well as effective. The book covers in detail, basic step by step felt making techniques, then goes on to present a series of projects from simple jewelry to beautiful vests.
softcover, 8 1/2 x 11, 136 pages, 500 photos/illustrations
