Altered Couture "No Sew Sweater"

I just returned from vacation to find my complimentary copy of the Winter issue of Altered Couture magazine. I have two items in the magazine. This is one. The 100% wool sweater has been embellished using a Embellishing (felting) machine. The flower petals are wool fabric that has been felted to the sweater. I them added the strips of a multicolored wool fabric and novelty yarn with the felting machine. The entire upcycled sweater was done with the felting machine. No sewing involved. The sweater and wool fabric were purchased at the thrift store. The novelty yarn was from my stash. I used my Huskystar ER 10 embellishing machine.

Felting Part Three

Here is an example of organza that has been texturized with the Huskystar ER10. I have tried to show the difference between the texturized part and the original piece of organza. This didn't take long and I really like the texturized organza. I can see many uses for this fabric. One possiblity would be fabric flowers. I plan to use this as a background for another felted piece.

More to come.

Felting Part II

The third layer was to cut out floral motifs from fabric and felt them onto the piece. I really like the addition of the flowers. The next layer was to add yarn to the flowers. I'm not too pleased with this. I guess I'm not very good at outlining the flowers with yarn. Maybe my motifs were too small or maybe I didn't have the correct yarn.

The final piece is going to be the front of a fabric postcard. I have already fused it to some peltex. Just waiting for an address.

Now I'm off to add texture to a piece of organza. I'll let you know how that goes.

Felting with Huskystar ER 10

I set some time aside today to experiment with my new felting machine. I purchased the machine in March and have used it only a couple of times. I have been inspired by some of the lovely pictures on blogs to get busy with needle felting. The first step was to felted fabric scraps to a piece of black felt with the machine. The next step was to add yarns and felt those onto the the top of fabric. Next post I will show adding flowers cut from floral fabric.

Needle felting class Janome

I attended a "free" class on Tuesday at Mulqueen's Sewing Center in Mesa. It was sponsored by Janome. We felted fibers on organza with the Janome felting machine and then used the Janome 11000 Embroidery machine to applique the felted fabric onto a piece of wool which had been felted with fibers. We used a leaf pattern. We were to make a small pillow but of course, I didn't make the pillow. I brought my fabric home and gave it more colors. The wool background was white and wasn't as colorful as I would like. I painted it with fabric dye. I also added more needle felting with a very sparkly lightweight fiber that I purchased at The Fiber Factory (don't remember the name of the fibers). The ladies at the Fiber Factory weren't sure if the fiber could be dyed. I was able to dye them a very light color and then added them to the piece to give it some sparkle. I plan to use the piece as the center of a wallhanging. I found a piece of tie dye in my stash that I think will look great as a background. This will be a next week project as I am swamped with projects at this time.