WAY TOO MUCH FUN

3-D HANDMADE FELT CONSTRUCTIONS

BEGINNING 3-D ART

dyed wool rovings, warm soapy water, bits & pieces of this and that, embroidery w/ perle cottons

 & misc. embellishments

Oh my, 

this is a super fun unit.

Lots of barnyard smells going on as the kids learn the age old technique of feltmaking.

The prep before the actual felting was a glorious riot of colors.

And then there was the actual felting experience.

The kids got soaking wet as they worked the warm soapy water into the wool.

We do this outside because of the bubbly wet mess it makes everywhere.

hee hee

Here are a few of the felted pieces before I put them into my washing machine 

to shrink them down even further.

Some close-ups.

And now onto the finished products.

I'm starting with senior Karen Long who made these adorable children's shoes.

These were a class favorite.

I always have thrift-ed antique laces & dollies for the kids to incorporate into their projects.

If you look closely at their felts you will see some that are embedded within the layers of wool.

Next we have was this little cutie by 8th grader Elliana Lee,

another class favorite.

Is it a whale/mouse?

I just want to pet it. 

 So tactile and sweet..

Several of the young ones made their pieces into journals.

Here we have 8th grader Malia Pulido above 

&

below,

junior Insha Khan.

Beautiful pieces girls with a lot of effort being put into the embroidery!!

And here's another sweet one by junior Helen Park.

Have you noticed that all these students have learned about visual flow?

Every embellishment they add should flow with their colors they chose to put into the wool.

They are graded on this for every assignment.

From above to below for Ms. Deliana Park,

English teacher.

She created a pouch from her very pretty piece of felt.

(note Ms. Hall how Deliana likes the same colorways you do)

One of my favs was this stuffed star by senior Charity Lizardo.

Just really loved how the colors came together in the felt (a lot of cool swirling going on),

how she allowed her seams to show 

& of course the cute buttons at the end of each ray.

Delightful!

And 8th grader Sydney Eng made this very elegant & sophisticated clutch.

And then another of my favorites was this journal by senior Hapshiba Kwon.

I hope you took your journal with you to college Hap,

and are writing your heart out inside it.

Love to all of you,

I miss you guys.

Felt Shoes - A New Assignment

This was a lot of work for my Intermediate 3-D kids, but the results were so worth it.  I got the idea for this project from my good friend and fiber artist Lori Lawson.  You can see her shoe results on her blog.

   

The shoe above was created by senior Sheila San Agustin and actually fits her foot!  As do all the shoes and boots you will see.  

That's because I had the kids use packaging tape to wrap their feet, so that each child would end up with a pattern and shoe to fit.  Here are 2 of the kids doing just that.  This part was so much fun  LOL  The kids made one cut down the back side to slip off the tape shoe.  Here is what they came up with below.  

Then each student took a sharpie and decided where their seams would be placed and drew a black line to represent each seam line, and cut their pattern apart along these lines; making notch lines along the edge so they would know where the edges lined up at when sewing together. 

We placed the plastic patterns on white poster type board and traced around them and added 1/2" seam allowances, and any notes we thought necessary.

Then we started felting.  Here is junior Josh Berger and senior Ashley Chowdhury wet felting their pieces.

As you can see we had to do it outside cuz it makes a pretty big mess.  :)

Above is Sheila's felt after she was done fulling it, and below you can see how we use our dye garden as a clotheslines.

A closer look at seniors Angela Wan and Lauren De Belen's fulled pieces.

Another look at Sheila's finished shoe.

Here is Angela's low boot/shoe.  Notice on all the shoes the lovely touches of embellishment with stitch, beads, charms and other goodies.  Was this required, you bet!

Senior Amy Hsu's tennis shoe, so clever Amy!

And here is Ashley's finished shoe.  Love, love, love the stripping she incorporated into her felt.

And Josh's boot.  How much fun is this?  

Another boot was done by senior Julia Faith Chanco.  I really like how she couched the white trim around her edges.  Also notice all Julia's seam lines to get her boot to have good structure.  Making the boots was so much more challenging, but I'm so impressed with these kids critical thinking on figuring it out and making it work.

And lastly we end with senior Tiffany Lee's Rhino shoe/boot.  How creative is this??  And look closely at all the bead work, the horns, ears.  Absolutely wonderful!  What an incredible talent.  

Thanks all of you for hanging in with this new and fairly difficult assignment.  I'm so proud of all of you1