Whiplash: Needle Felt Embellished Hat Entry

This is my first time actually trying to enter Whiplash. I'm not sure if which ring of the competition to throw it into. It's also my first attempt at a needle felting tutorial. The first step, of course, was to obtain a hat. This one was a $1 find at my local thrift shop. The hat was in mostly good condition but had a minor stain and a couple of small holes, presumably from someone attaching a pin to decorate the hat. For my purposes, none of those defects really mattered. (Unfortunately, I neglected to take any pictures of the hat before I started embellishing.)

After figuring out what motif I wanted to use to decorate my thriftshop find, I located the defects on the hat that I wanted to hide. I sketched my design onto the hat using chalk, placing the eyes of the peacock feathers over the holes that I wanted to felt over. I selected colors of corriedale roving needed to complete my design and began filling in the eyes of the feathers as though coloring a paint by number. I found that the chalk outlines disappeared rather quickly once I started the actual felting process. That didn't really matter much, however, because the lines were only intended as a guide for placement of the eyes and the rest of the feather was built more or less free-form around the eyes.

Once the eyes were finished, I decided that the hat needed a bit more glitz. for the remainder of the feathers, angelina fibers were carded into the roving to add sparkle to the finished project. This picture shows the hat with the blended rolags of the two brownish tones that I selected for the tops of the feathers. In the foreground you can see the clover multi-needle punch and a single needle that I used to attach the fiber to the hat. For tacking fibers in place, I generally keep one or two felting needles in each size with a self-adhesive label wrapped around the top. On this lable, I can write the size and shape of the needle so that I can tell at a glance which needle I'm reaching for. Many manufacturers color code their felting needles, but I can never seem to remember which color corresponds to which size/shape.

I also selected several colors from the eye of the feather and carded them together with the angelina fibers for the "fronds" of the feathers. I hoped that by blending the colors, I would be able to mimic the irridescence of the play of colors on the feathers. To make the fronds, I started by pulling out thin tufts of the blended fiber and rolling it between my hands to make a thin snake. I then arranged those snakes into the pattern that I wanted. After some experimentation, I also found that I could spin (I needed the practice drafting on my spinning wheel) a thick/thin single which I could then pull apart in the lengths that I wanted. Since my spinning is still a bit rough, the overtwisted lengths of fiber kinked back on themselves in a way that I found pleasing and felt contributed to the overall design.

For those not familiar with needle felt embellishment, you begin by arranging the fibers onto the base fabric. It's a little like painting with the fiber. Once you're pleased with the arrangement of your colored fibers, you tack them into place with a single needle. A felting needle is very sharp and usually has either a triangular or "star" shaped cross-section. This cross section creates "blades" on the needle which have tiny barbs arranged along their length. The barbs grab the fiber and push them through the base fabric. To use the needles, you support your base fabric on a block of foam and push the needle through the fiber and base fabric into the foam pushing the loose fibers through at the same time. For this hat, I found that a "Nerf" football followed the contour of the crown of the hat better than the block foam that I had been using and I was able to work much more effectively without jabbing myself in the fingers with the needle as often as I had done with the square block.

From this point, the entire process can be done either with the single needle, or with a variety of multi-needle punches. The punches certainly make the process go much more quickly.


My current favorite punch is the clover multi-needle punch. It holds 5 needles and has a plastic guard which locks when the punch is not in use. The guard also protects your fingers so that you don't perforate them while you work. Once the fibers have been tacked down, the punch makes the actual work of securing the fiber to the base fabric go much, much more quickly.

An' The Wheel Goes 'Round

I mentioned in an earlier post that I'd recently learned to spin on a drop spindle. What I didn't mention was that I was also the recipient of a beautiful Country Craftsman spinning wheel. The wheel, she hasn't told me her name yet, came to me with a broken footman. After looking closely at the point of failure on the original part, I realized that it had broken at least once before in the same location and had been repaired.

The first thing that I did was to research Country Craftsman wheels in an effort to find a stock replacement. What I found was that these wheels were made by hand by a woodworker in Massachusetts for something like 25 years before he retired a couple of years ago. Needless to say, replacement parts are not exactly growing on trees.

In retrospect, I find that I'm actually glad that I wasn't able to get a stock replacement. I quickly decided that what I needed to do was to find someone to re-make the footman. I took measurements from the original, studied how it fit onto the wheel and how it worked, and took matters into my own hands. I created an Alchemy request on Etsy.

If you're not familiar with Etsy Alchemy, you're not alone. It is a system set up by the wizards at Etsy to connect buyers with artisans/craftspeople who can fulfil their makery wishes. It's also a little confusing. First, the buyer posts an alchemy request saying what they want. They include pictures or links to help clarify their needs. Then one or more Etsy artists bid to fill the request, supplying their own pictures or other information. Then the buyer chooses a bid (or several bids) and from there the commissioned work is completed, paid for, and feedback is left. It is a wonderous and magical process.

In the case of my footman, I got one bid from a woodworker in Canada who I'd corresponded with earlier this year about custom pottery tools. Barry is a great guy and the two of us exchanged quite a few messages about measurements and tweeks to the design of the original footman. In the end, he recommended a footman made of 2 layers of maple laminated together with metal plates on either side of the keyhole opening where the footman attaches to the flywheel. We changed the dimensions of the footman, as well, widening it so that the holes do not come so close to the edges as to weaken the structure of the finished part.

My new footman arrived from Canada in Saturday's mail. In the last few days, have admired it, fondled it, shown it off to my spinning mentor, and finally, attached it to my spinning wheel where it will live until the end of time. With the new footman in place, I took the wheel for a real test drive. I spun up 1/2 ounce of leaf green corriedale wool that I had purchased for a needle felting project. My thought, when I started spinning it, was that I would pull it off the bobbin and allow it to relax so that I could use it as vines for my planned needle felted embellishment. Now that it's spun, however, I can't decide whether to go with the original plan, or to ply it back on itself and save it as a momento of my first real yarn spun on my very own spinning wheel. For now, I'll leave it on the bobbin where I can admire it while I work on glazing beads for this weekend.

Expect some fun fiber posts over the next week or so... A tutorial, a long overdue explanation of my spinning fascination, more images of the large wavy motif in progress, and maybe even some yarn, assuming that I get my clay work done. Wish me luck finding the time that I'll need over the next three days.

Image: [Irish Spinner and Spinning Wheel. Co. Galway, Ireland] Found via Library of Congress online collection. REPRODUCTION NUMBER: LC-DIG-ppmsc-09892 (digital file from original) No known restrictions on publication. photomechanical print : photochrome, color. [between ca. 1890 and ca. 1900].

More Studio Stuff

I spent some time today listing new pins in my Etsy shop. Tonight I'm bisque firing the stuff that I made to replace the items that I lost in last week's explosive firing. (I should try to take a picture of the debris inside the kiln before I clean it up but I doubt that I'll bother.) I'm really very excited about the pieces that I'm working on. I'm practicing my carving skills and making press molds which will keep the finished pieces as affordable as possible.

I'm still working on the needle felted project that I posted about yesterday. In addition, I'm about to start a needle felted hat. I found a beautiful wool hat for $1.00 at a thrift shop. I'm going to embellish it with needle felting and take photos at each stage of the process. I'm thinking that it will work up into a fun tutorial. If I get my act together, I may be able to have it finished in time for the Whiplash deadline since the September theme is Hats.

My other big project right now is that I want to re-write my artists' statement. It's probably because of my recent obsession with fiberarts but I've got all of these philosophical points running around in my head about "Women's Work" and the whole Art vs. Craft debate and what gets called "craft" and the value placed on crafts as opposed to "Art"...

I'm sure that reading statements from clothing designers, weavers, and other textile artists talking about their struggles to have their work accepted into galleries and validated by the "establishment" has influenced my thinking about all of this. It's just interesting to me that since I've decided to turn my attention more toward incorporating my beads into finished objects that compliment my interest in fibers and textiles, I've acquired a broader perspective with which to view the Art v. Craft groupthink.

However, if I find myself too tempted to indulge in pointless woolgathering, I just remind myself that I have a show to prepare for next weekend, and beads/pins to make.