More Fun with Felt

Yesterday, we took down all the Christmas lights and decorations. They always come down a lot faster than they go up. I set a goal to have it all done by 5:00 PM. We almost made it, until it was time to take down the undecorated tree. Our tree this year was ten feet tall, hand-selected by my husband in Ashe County the week of Thanksgiving. We had to purchase a new base for it to hold water. The trunk was too fat for our old base. Plus, I wanted to be double-sure that no water would leak on the new wood floors. So, DH starts peering under the tree to un-bolt the tree from the base...and discovered that some sort of insect decided to breed in the water over the holidays! EEEEEEEYEWWW! At first, we thought they were spiders, but it turned out that they had wings. Thousands of these things. To me they looked like baby deer flies. Anyway, it took two disgusting hours to clean up all the mess. What a downer of a way to end the holidays!

The day before that (New Year's Eve) I played around some more with the new Embellisher. I bought this copy of Cloth Paper Scissors a while back, and remembered an article by Pokey Bolton on Needle-felted ATC's (Artist Trading Cards.)

I have no desire to make ATC's, but thought it would be fun to make some backgrounds for fabric postcards.

I started with a piece of fuchsia felt, of which I for some reason have vast quantities, and punched down some strips of fabric scraps, mostly in turquoise. Then, I started adding bits of my left-over fibers, and ribbons. I took the piece to my sewing machine and added some machine stitching. Then I cut the piece up into three postcard size pieces, and a few leftover bits.

These were really fun to do, although more time-consuming than you would think. They have lots of layers of stuff, creating some dimension. I will probably add a little bit of beading before making them into postcards.

While working on this project, I experienced the first broken needle on my Baby Lock 12-needle embellishing machine. Got to admit, I was a bit afraid of those twelve needles at first. Mainly, that I would stab my fingers with twelve needles at once! There is a removable finger guard that I do not intend to remove while needle-felting.

Well, I had read that you should not continue to use the machine with a broken needle, even with eleven others to continue the work. I noticed a clunking sound once the needle broke. So, out came the instructions. I was going along fine until I had to put the needle casing back in the machine. A mere forty-five minutes later, I figured out how to do it. The needle casing reminded me of a Gatling gun.

Wishing you all a happy and safe new year with lots of time to try new things!