Landscape with Wet Felting

 

If you have kids who like to irritate,

this is their kind of project!

 

I readily admit, that the more children involved in our homeschooling day, the trickier it is to plan activities that everyone will enjoy. They all have different interests, different styles of learning and varying levels of enthusiasm. However, if the activity involves getting messy, it's all hands on deck.

Wet felting is a great group activity and really not even that messy as it requires only soap and water. They have all asked to repeat this project on a more regular basis.

First, you have to purchase some felt, also known as roving wool or fleece. Its carded wool, so it's super soft and peels apart like fluffy clouds-sensationally sensory in other words. There are loads of projects (felt beads, felt bowls, felt slippers!) but we started with felt landscape.

You require a towel, plastic/bubble wrap, mesh (we cut the mesh bags lemons are sold in), felt in a variety of colours, and a bowl of soapy warm water.

I had each artist choose three favourite colours of pencil crayons to sketch up a landscape background first. Divide a piece of scrap paper into thirds and block in your base colours. Then match your colours to roving wool.

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Working with your plastic on a towel, peel small tufts of (any colour) roving wool and place vertically on your plastic. This will be the base/back of your work.

Then lay your colours of choice horizontally on top. Be sure if you have solid colour wool, to lace colour with a shade lighter or darker to add some depth. For example, if you chose turquoise, purple and blue, lace small strands of lighter turquoise, purple and blue on corresponding colours. That way it looks more accurately like a sky or sea or bed of grass than solid colours stacked on top of one another.

You can also add some small details: sun, birds, flowers, trees. Simply 'draw' them on with roving wool. Alternately, you can stitch/embroider details on when the piece is completely dry or combine felting and embroidery for details and outlining.

 

Lay your mesh on top of the landscape to hold the roving wool in place while you irritate the fibers. Irritating fibers creates matted felt-just like when you stick a wool sweater in the wash and dryer and it comes out tiny and firm!  Using warm, soapy water, soak your landscape down. Don't be shy-you can't destroy it with too much water.

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Once it's wet, begin rolling it up in the towel in one direction, unroll and roll again the other direction. The more you do this, the more the fibers will be irritated and stick together. 

When you think you have irritated your art enough, unroll, remove the mesh and let air dry in a warm place. hang from a tiny branch or cut of dowel.