Learning to nuno / wet felt a flower shape ...

 Hi everyone, 

I love taking courses for new things I want to learn to do or skills I want to improve. I am a firm believer in life long learning & am at the stage of life where I have more time to indulge my passions for crafts that interest me ... 

A local shop that I did a previous course at advertised a wet felting / nuno felting morning & I signed up immediately because I love felting but had not done wet felting before. 

My friend Ellie signed up too, we have not done a course together since we did an all day Gentlework one some years back. 

Just 6 of us, all wet felt novices. 

Jeni took us through the steps, all working together which is always preferable as it is easy to follow a new process. 

We first needle felted silk bits on to our 2 different size pre-felted squares. They had a small triangle cut from each side, then the smaller square & the two thinner bits were needle felted in the centre to keep them together. 

Then came the new part - placing bubble wrap, with a hole cut out in the centre, over the bottom layer, then another layer between the top & the 4 thin stamen sections to keep them apart so they did not felt together during the process. 

Warm soapy water in a bottle was applied to start the process on the bottom layer, worked in between the two layers of bubble wrap with fingers until it felt like the threads were binding, then the process was repeated with the top square layer before it was rubbed together in the soapy  bubble wrap. This binds the additional felting silks to the pre-felt until it becomes a new fabric. 

The cross over thin stamen strips were rolled between the hands to make it in to rope like strips. 

After much rubbing of the work, it is then rolled in a towel & rolled by hand up & down to get the felt effect. It has to be taken out regularly & gently eased apart to make sure it is not all felting together. 

A very interesting time rolling, checking, rolling & checking until the soap is rinsed off & more rolling is done to get a compact shape that could be manipulated in to the flower shape you want.

The base is pinched during the rolling stage to give it the flower base shape that holds it all together. 

It can be further embellished with beads or stitching etc. 

We pegged our bases to keep them in shape while it dried & took them home still damp. 

A very enjoyable & interesting morning. Definitely a new skill I will be practising... 

I hope you have enjoyed this explanation .... 

 Dee 💕