Monday, July 09, 2012

Inspired Felt Buttons


So in the process of cutting circles of wool felt for buttons...I became bored.
















Even knowing that I would be attaching these to some upcoming nuno-felted pieces with beads, other buttons, and some perle cotton didn't help...I was not inspired!

I had gone through all my containers of smaller felt pieces looking for ones that were at least 1 1/2 to 2 inches wide. If the piece wasn't big enough for at least 3 buttons, back in the container it went. Okay, the plain red ones, the plain fuchsia ones, the plain ochre ones...
Wait, what are these narrow multi-color pieces? They're not wide enough for circles, but what if I cut them into narrow strips (mine were about a half an inch wide), put a little glue on them and rolled them up like a pinwheel? Pin them until they're dry. Oh, yeah!
It was pretty easy to get that look! 
These started out with 2 or 3 different wool yarns (feltable) that I single crocheted into squares or rectangles.  Any completed size will do as long as you remember that the squares or other shape will felt down to about 1/2 of the original size.  If you think about how the crochet stitch is created, you'll understand how the interesting circular patterns in the discs appear even after felting. Wow. I like. I think I'm going to need a lot of pieces that need closures for this fall's collection of "Of Wool and Silk Bondage" wearables...