fibre friday: garland of flowers

Over the last year I’ve moved into a slightly different technique for combining feltable fibre with wire crochet. Previously, my designs were embroidered into the wire mesh then felted. Now I’m experimenting with adding the fibre by needle felting. This technique uses a sharp, barbed needle to push the individual fibres through the mesh to bind with each other. I’m pleased that it works; I’ve seen fibre-on-fibre needle felting and envied the precision of design resulting from it. Now I can recreate this kind of effect in my wire crochet pieces.

One of my first cuff designs using this method features a garland of flowers. First I placed and felted the stems in place, then created the individual flowers on the felting mat before attaching them to the greenery. Once happy with the placement, the whole cuff was wet felted to ‘set’ the design.

I’ll be making more of these for the christmas market (see my Events tab for details), and also teaching this method during the upcoming Wire and Fibre II class at Place des Arts (starts Saturday, October 21st – 1.30pm to 4pm: phone Place des Arts to register).