I’ve just don’t have enough time in the day to write a detailed post about how I felted my sister Suzanne’s rug but hopefully these pictures will give you an idea of what the finished rug is like, I LOVE the fact that it is reversible! I did upload more pics of the work in progress to FB if you are interested, thanks everyone for your positive comments as I progressed throughout the afternoon.
Starting size 1m x 2m (39.37″ x 78.74″) – I laid the design out in merino on top of a fine wool and cotton fabric base prepared at Mehmet Girgic’s studio in Turkey.
Design laid in merino wool on top of a base prepared at Mehmet Girgic's studio in Turkey
Note the areas where I have left uncovered, these will become textured white parts in the finished design, again I have uploaded a detailed picture to FB. Mehmet makes the bases from approx 6 fine layers of undyed wool covered with a sheet of tightly woven cotton muslin. This is wet out and stamped until the wool fibre is starting to penetrate the fabric but no shrinkage has occured. I bought quite a bit of this base material from him several years ago and this was a piece left in my stash.
Working the reverse of the rug with my new fulling roller and stretching the edges with a pliers
Niki Collier and I will be selling beautiful hand made fulling tools to our own designs shortly, the grooved roller that I used in the final stages of this rug is one of them and it worked wonderfully to spot full and even up the edges. I also pulled with a pliers to stretch a bit where necessary, these ones are just jewellery pliers that I picked up in Aldi for a song! Pin It
The last picture I’m sharing today is one of the finished rug. In actual fact the rug is fully reversible and if you head on over to FB you can see the reverse side, I love the subtlety of the design blending with the natural wool on the back. For those of you with a mathamatical bent the lay out size was 100cm X 200cm and the end size 72cm X 140cm. Using an online percentage calculator this means that the rug shrunk 28% widthways and 30% lengthways, I did work it slightly more in the lengthwise direction as I wanted to get the best shape and size possible for Suzanne!
Suzanne's new felt rug!
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Ooohhhhh….The rug is absolutely fabulous….Suzanne is going to love it!!!!! Will make for a very merry Christmas/happy birthday gift. You are faster than greased lightening!!!! Do you use that expression? ;-)))
Congratulations on such a beautiful rug after all of your hard work.
Big hugs,
Dawn
Thanks Dawn, I sure hope she likes it!
So cool!
muy hermosa esta alfombra, felicitaciones y gracias por compartir,
Its so alive with colour, it sings.
That’s amazing! I love the colours and the pattern. And it’s so neat.
How long did it take from start to finish?
Ahh,what a colours!Amazing!Great job!
So bright, so fresh looking at it. The spots are so “outstanding”. The rug surely brighten the house.
Beautiful work — I love that grooved (groovy!) “fulling roller,” too — and will look forward to learning more about the tools that you and Niki Collier will offer!