As blogged about yesterday I continued creating my new felt road sign yesterday afternoon.  This is going to be a prototype so please keep the comments coming!  Thanks to Micki and anyone who left helpful suggestions on Flickr, I need a selection of ideas for the wording, whatever I make needs to be clearly seen as you drive around the corner near the top of my lane.  For this reason my first attempt simply says ‘Studio open’ and the writing is quite big.  Although the image might not show it clearly the wording and wavy outline around it is in a deep maroon, the oak leaves in the corners are outlined in dark green and the border is a bright orange. 

Anyway, as soon as the image was laid out to my satisfaction I placed it on a bamboo mat and wet it thoroughly with hot soapy water.  Next I rolled the package tightly and tied it up with strong cotton string.  When learning the Osman technique with Mehmet we rolled the rugs up in a large plastic woven mat and then stamped and rolled them on the floor.  This had been my intention with the bamboo but it was obvious immediately that it was not going to stand up to such rough treatment.  My next move was to put on a Jack L cd and roll on my kitchen table for as long as I could having already decided that rolling by foot on the floor was killing my legs!  Does anyone roll by foot and is there a secret?  I know that some people say it is very relaxing and much better for large projects but how do you do it???  The cd played for 52 minutes (notice that I was counting!) and I made myself get into a rhythm and refused to stop until the last notes of the music died down.  Revealing the half felted sign was a big moment, would the words have shifted, had I laid out enough wool, would the fact that I couldn’t stamp on it ‘a la Mehmet’ mean that it wouldn’t felt at all?  The reveal was interesting …. the words hadn’t shifted although a few small gaps appeared where I hadn’t filled in with quite enough wool, the orange looked great and overall the sign appears to be shaping up nicely.  Now I am off the have a quick hot drink and am ready to rock and roll again, another couple of hours rolling and fulling in varying directions and I hope that I will have a large piece of felt ready to hang!