Showing posts with label textile arts. Show all posts
Showing posts with label textile arts. Show all posts

Friday, May 18, 2012

Felted Rocks

We are still enjoying, very slowly, our journey through A Pioneer Sampler: The Daily Life of a Pioneer Family in 1840 - this has been a GREAT book to read together. Taking our time has been really enjoyable as we can learn about items on a bit deeper level, enjoy some special projects and let it all soak in.

Today we finished rereading the section on harvesting wool and the uses for it. I have a plan to do a larger felting project for Holly but to start I decided to do a felted rock project. Felting rocks is super simple, fun and leaves you with a sweet little decorative rock to display. A small treasure!

First we chose a smooth river rock. Then Holly chose from our assortment of wool (Thank You to a friend of Bryan's who bought this for us to use, so very sweet!!!!). She broke off a few small chunks. We got a bowl of very warm, soapy water. Taking the rock you wrap it in your first wool choice, dip in the warm water and start forming it around the rock. You add layers as you work with it, making sure to agitate it so the wool fibers all grab and slowly form a solid piece. Keep adding wool and working it in the water, rolling it in your hands, lightly rubbing, rinsing and repeating. Once we had the desired look we then squeezed the water out the best we could, then in a small towel and let them to dry. 

They turned out great and were a lot of fun to do!!! Now she has a better understanding of what the final wool product can and will do... soon we will be starting a bigger project!












Thursday, November 10, 2011

Mini-Weaving Loom


This week for Camp Fire we are looking at textile arts and trying our hands at a few projects that fall under this category. I hosted a small weaving project with our troop. It is a very simple project requiring very little in materials yet a great little project that is easy, colorful and as Holly has informed me - a bit addictive!

She did one yesterday at our Camp Fire meeting and then came home to make one more and this morning asked to make even another. It is artistic, requires focus, patience, hand eye coordination and good fine motor skills - all great skills to use!

To create a small loom I hot glued four popsicle sticks together to create a square. Then I tied on a solid color of yarn and wrapped the loom about five times and tied off. You now have a very simple loom! With a great assortment of yarns, scissors and little fingers - you are set to create! Tie onto the bottom corner thread and weaving in and out, back and forth. Change yarn by tying it off and keep weaving. When you are all finished you tie off on the last rows final thread. Trim and tuck all little knots you have.

A sweet, simple mini-weaving project!