Wet Felting a Bent Wood Chair

I'm working on a little experiment at the moment, covering found furniture with wool. On top of a smooth wet felted surface I then plan to add texture with knitting, needlefelt and other needlework techniques. To begin with I have removed the wooden seat round and entirely wrapped the chair with wool rug selvedge yarn. The seat is surprisingly comfortable and stable with just a figure of eight wrapping around the seat circumference.

The chair looks surprising good as it is but I would like to create a very durable and smooth felted surface that I can then embellish with other textures. The seat pad I plan to work separately with wet and dry felting and then attach to the seat and felt it in. 

So far I've started by wrapping the covered chair in fibre that I have prefelt with dry felting and wound wool around it to keep it in place and then started the wet soaping felting process. I'm just experimenting at the moment to see what problems might come up. So far it has been difficult keeping the fibres from separating when shrinking and the prefelt has been helping with that. 

After the chair, I intend to felt a small coffee table that I found and a very sweet little foot stool with worn patches of tapestry that I intend to "restore" with needlefelting. Stay tuned. Any tips or suggestions welcome! 

Making Hand Dipped Beeswax Candles

Well, trying to anyway... I've always wanted to make my own hand dipped beeswax candles. Being due any day now I also envisaged birthing at home in the light beeswax candles that I'd made myself. A bit of a romantic notion and instead of lovely long tapered candles I ended up with three potted candles from beeswax that we collected from around some hives one weekend.

Around the hives at Heidi gallery in Heidelberg, Melbourne, we found some curious lumps of beeswax in the grass, some was really black. It smelt gorgeous and so we collected it up to see it we could make something of it.

I'd read that it was important to purify the wax before you melt it down to remove debris and other bits you might not want to burn and breathe. You do this by boiling the wax in a muslin bag so the wax floats to the surface and then repeating the process with finer mesh bags until your wax is lovely and clean. 

After it has boiled, you place the pot outside to cool and then you are left with a lovely solid disc of wax...

Break this up and put in a finer mesh bag and repeat the process, I used an old rolled oat sack...

When your wax is clean, break up and melt it in an old tin can...

Then you can begin the tedious process of dipping the wicks. I must admit this is where it all went horribly wrong. Because I had such a small tin can I could only dip the wick in a little bit. I ended up with candles that looked a little like this...

Hmmm. Decided these wouldn't really do so I ended up melting the wax and pouring it into little glasses with a wick in the centre instead. But not before knocking over the pot of hot wax and having to peel it off the kitchen and remelt and try again...

They actually burn beautifully so all was not lost and they smell lovely too...

Merlin's technicolour dream quilt

I've been meaning to blog about this quilt project for a while now. When I was expecting my first baby (Merlin now aged 2), my Mum had the idea to create a patchwork quilt made up of squares created by all the wonderfully creative women in our family and friends close to us. It was completed for Merlin's 1st birthday Dec 2010. 

The result is this magical technicolour dream quilt with a whole lot of history. There are pieces of retro 70s curtains from my baby room, embroidery from the baby bib of Merlin's grandmother, Merlin's father's embroidered school badge from his uniform showing the ashford river where he grew up. There is a crochet granny square by Merlin's great grandma, stunningly detailed embroideries by Merlin's great aunt in France, wonderful silk applique by some friends living in cambodia at the time which depict little scenes with fond memories of our friendship.  There is even Merlin's knitted umbilical cord tie made of bamboo yarn that I made to avoid the standard issue plastic one (complete with mummified belly button!). I know, I know... slightly weird but nevertheless all part of Merlin's birth story. 

click on image to view detail

The quilt project had its own facebook group where the most active members, my mother and auntie Corrie uploaded pictures of their squares as they went. There were squares from England, Cambodia, Australia and France. It was so touching to have so many dear friends and family add to the story of the quilt. It gives us as a family many visual cues about those dear to us, especially considering Merlin will always be on the otherside of the world to one half of his extended family. It's a story quilt. When he gets his own bed, this quilt alone will provide enough bedtime stories for an entire childhood.

To those of you who contributed, thank you for the love and creativity you bestowed these small squares of fabric that together will keep Merlin warm and entertained for years to come. It's truly an heirloom and we will treasure it always. Sorry it has taken me so long to actually show you photos of the finished piece!

Mum sewed all the squares together with the seams on the right side. With the squares all being quite different in size many of them would have lost quite a lot of their edges. The effect is that each square is kind of framed by its selvedge.

Contributors and relationship to Merlin

Bev (grandmother)

Pat (grandmother)

Corrie (great aunt)

Marilyn (great aunt)

Faye (great aunt)

Elaine (great grandmother)

Josephine (late great grandmother)

Penny & Ellie (aunt and cousin)

Heidi (aunt)

Brenna (mother)

Dominic (father)

Kirsten (friend)

Andrew (friend)

Daisy (friend)

Nami (friend)

Janet (friend)

Mags (friend)

some individual square that were photographed before the quilt was put together, click to see detail

Aran Trivets/Pot Holders

I've been collecting Aran sweaters for a while, you can find lots of them at car boot sales. Over time they tend to felt and shrink a bit and they tend to feel really rigid and heavy so they are not that pleasant to wear anymore. But the texture is beautiful and I love repurposing them into all sorts of things. These hot plates/trivets/pot holders are really handy and look lovely on the dinner table or as a plant pot holder. They're practical too, you can just throw them in the wash if need be, since they have already been felted they won't shrink any further. I'm working on more of these for my shop in a range of colours. I've just listed these...

Take a look at my shop for more.

Granny Square Egg Cosies

My mum was having a clear out last time I visited Australia and she gave me a bag of Grandma's old tapestry yarn in beautiful colours, I think these were left overs from a tapestry Rembrandt that she did. She was also big on crochet, not being able to knit anymore because of arthritis. As a child, I remember my Grandma sitting on her beige velour recliner crocheting granny square after granny square for blankets that I don't remember seeing finished. 

So these egg cup cosies are a tribute to her. Once I started pairing up the colours I couldn't stop until the bag was used up. You can find a pattern for these at the great knitting and crochet resource by the fab Norwegian designers at Pickles. 

I often find really cute egg cosies at car boot sales, I once found a little set of vintage cotton poplin egg warmers with little matching placements embroidered with little chickens. You do have to wonder who really needs to keep their boiled eggs warm, but having said that I do find that preparing a soft boiled egg breakfast is a bit of a military operation, ensuring everyone's eggs are perfectly runny and have buttery soldiers at the ready.  So having a few egg cosies handy could help whilst you round up the troops to the table I suppose. Anyway with Easter and Spring approaching it's nice to have a few egg related objects around. 


I have these pairs of egg cosies for sale on my etsy shop, they are just a limited edition now that Grandma's tapestry yarns are satisfying all used up and all the proceeds will be donated to Médecins Sans Frontiéres (Doctors Without Borders).

Blue Zig Zag Quilt

I found some real textile goodies on the weekend at a stash sale at Fabrications , a great crafty eco design shop/workshop run by pioneering sustainable textile artist Barley Massey. In my haul, amongst a few of the gems, was packet of fabric that on closer inspection turned out to be two parts of an unfinished patchwork.

I had been trying to make a version of the Purl Bee zig zag quilt for Merlin for ages, well since he got his own bed about a month ago, but the project had been stalling while I tried to make all the perfect fabric choices. So I was thrilled that I didn't have to make those decisions and could finish another's stalled project. I think that's one reason I avoid buying new materials because if you get me in a fabric store, it's like being a kid in a sweet shop, you just want a bit of everything! And that makes it impossible to make any style choices. It explains a bit why my etsy shop is a bit of a mish mash with items from crochet to paper mobiles to shoes. I also can't decide which craft I like best, I just want to make it all!

So in my Fabrications bag (a bargain at only three quid!) there was two pieces of fabric that had been lovingly stitched in a blue and white zig zag pattern. I sewed to two pieces together to make one, and they magically matched the exact dimensions of the crib quilt cotton wadding I had bought for the quilt. I backed it with some organic fair trade cotton I picked up, stitched along the ditches of the zig zags to quilt the sandwich and trimmed it with a bit of ecru bias binding. It's really cute and perfect for the warmer coming months. I am thinking of adding some running stitches width wise and the giving it hot wash to shrink the cotton wadding to give it a bit of a wrinkly antique look but I'm not sure if this would be overkill.

I'd love to know who started this quilt or whatever they intended this fabric to be and to show them that their hard work didn't go to waste that it is actually being appreciated again and given a new lease on life...

I also picked up some beautiful hemp/burlap grain sacks from Barley's Grandmother's time, when she worked in the Lancashire textile mills. I'll put some pictures up soon of these and see what they would like to become...

Autumn Leaves

busy Merlin in the woods

Autumn is an incredibly exciting time in London, it feels as if everyone is busy creating. This must be some lingering instinct from bygone days when Autumn was an industrious time of harvesting, pickling and preparing for a long sparse winter. Well, whatever it is, I like it. I've always liked Autumn, but now that I'm a knitter, Autumn signals an excuse to get those pins out and produce layers of woolly warmth for loved ones.


As a tribute to Autumn, I made this pretty mobile out of waxed tissue paper, that celebrates the leaves changing from green to brown.

Here's how you can make your own Autumn Leaves paper mobile:

• Trace a leaf - I found the typical leaf shape more effective than a maple style leaf...
• Cut out shape in layers of tissue paper in colours from greens through yellows, oranges, reds and browns (about 5 layers in each leaf)
• Place half a pipe cleaner in the middle of each stack of 5 paper leaves and stitch a holding stitch either end of the pipe cleaner with a loop between. Then attached the hanging thread in the middle of the loop so that the leaf balances straight. You can then fold up and down some of the layers of the leaf to reveal the various colours
• Make a ring out of some wicker or a pliable vine, or use some wire and cover with fabric strips or ribbon. Add four ties to the ring and tie with a loop for hanging, make sure it balances well
• Hang the leaves in stages so that they spiral down (I've used eight leaves because it worked well with the four ties)

Hang and enjoy. Light a candle underneath (not too close) and watch the leaves twist and turn.