Felted notebooks

A busy week which started with me deciding to make some felted notebooks ready for Cambridge Open Studios in July.  You may have seen machines that can do needle felting or 'embellishing'.  I used to have one at my old school. I thought a separate embellishing machine would be one machine too many in my studio so I bought the attachment for my trusty Bernina. Here is a photo of the box. It was a bit pricey but it does the job very well. 

You need to fit the attachment, which includes a different throat plate, remove the rotary hook and bobbin, leaving the front of your 'bobbin area' open. Fluff does collect there but it's no problem since I clean and oil my machine very frequently. The needle array consists of five barbed needles which punch through fibres and yarn. 

So, I found a ball of soft roving, teased it out and began embellishing it onto some felt I made last summer.  

Here's a close up of starting. See how I've arranged the roving to spread it out.

Here I've created a little loop to punch into the base fabric. I often hold it down with a kebab stick so that my fingers don't get in the way!

Another view of my piece as it starts to come together......

Sometimes you can get quite thick, lumpy areas. If you are not careful you can overdo the felting and simply make a hole in the base fabric. This photo shows me laying some old cheap netting over the area. This helps to keep everything flat and stable until it's felted down. The net is thrown away afterwards. 

Eventually, I am finished and I trim my newly embellished fabric and cut it down to cover a small notebook. This photo shows me using invisible thread to stitch down one of the inner flaps. (I hate hand stitching!)

A button is added to the front with some linen thread and dangly beads and I'm done. I made 12 notebook covers in one afternoon. They will be for sale at my Open Studio Event in July.

The next project is working on something for the Arthur Rank Hospice Appeal.