Sewing Machine Techniques, Video Class

PREVIEW: How to Create Scrap Strip Beauties – s06e05

If you’ve been creating anything for longer than a few days, I can guarantee that you’ve got scraps and lots of them! In this class you’ll learn how to recycle and combine those leftover fabric or paper scraps into fun Scrap Strip Beauties that add the perfect touch to so many projects.

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I intend to create these posts from a somewhat timeless point of view. However, as I write in the autumn of 2020, our world has experienced what seems like endless turmoil for months. There’s just no denying it. I could choose all kinds of adjectives and metaphors to describe my own personal journey through this experience, and some of you might relate while others would describe the saga very differently.

It’s been a pretty scrappy year so far. We’ve each transformed very abruptly from freedom to restriction - for our own good, right? We’ve each moved through so many emotions; doubt, disbelief, shock, fear, denial, and then we have the question with no answer; “When will this be over?” Everything as we knew it feels so fragmented now; scrappy.

Contemplating ALL of this has caused me to reflect on my “stuff” - emotional and physical. It’s probably because I’m in this one space more than ever before and I can’t easily ignore my head at the moment! 😉

In this space, like many of you, I have loads of accumulated fabrics and papers. They are beautiful and stimulating as I imagine what to create with them. When inspiration strikes, I get busy. Sometimes I work on a new class and sometimes I’m content to explore and enjoy the creative process.

I’ve realized at the moment just how much I appreciate the small things like all the pretty scrap bits and pieces. I love them but they certainly pile up and overwhelm my space if left untouched for a while.

Recently, as I was sorting my seemingly endless colorful scraps, I began ruminating about the world outside my door. Does that ever happen to you? For me, mindless tasks equal wandering thoughts.

Questions pop up. Worries seem larger than ever. What can I do about what’s happening “out there”? What can I do about what’s happening “in here”? It gets pretty daunting, doesn’t it?

So, I decided it was time to do something. I hope you’ll join me on my creative excursion. Let’s transform some stuff. Let’s just create for the sake of creating. Let’s embrace these moments in our lives and use them to breathe and allow. Let’s let go with the flow and just see what happens. Bit by bit, action by action we can possibly lessen the overwhelming emotions. We will find beauty and joy as the scraps in front of us transform.

I bet our wandering minds will take us to some interesting places, too. Let it wander. Let it be just for a while as we create beauty out of scraps. It’s pretty awesome to create something out of nothing.

Be sure to download your class notes.

I’ll see you soon.

Remember to Get Creative today. It’s easy!

Barb

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Needle Felting, Sewing, Sewing Machine, Video Class

PREVIEW: How to Needle Felt Wool Roving – s03e08

Wool roving is absolutely luscious fiber, but if you’re not a spinner, what do you do with it? Why not learn how to “paint” with wool roving and your needle felting machine to create your own unique fabrics. Add decorative stitching with neon thread and suddenly wool roving is transformed and your creativity will be on fire!

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My first experience with wool roving and needle felting took place in a class with a fabulous artist named Sharon Costello. Each person in the class decided what she wanted to create and we were given various colors of wool roving and one single felting needle with which to bring our creations from idea to reality.

I spent 3 days felting a seated male figure complete with blue jeans, suspenders, western shirt, string tie and cowboy boots! Three days! I loved the end result, but wowsers, it was a LOT of felting - not to mention a few poked fingers when I wasn’t careful. I truly loved learning the process and was so proud of my guy.

Fast forward several years and I learned how to use a felting needle to apply fibers as hair to my dolls’ heads. This great technique gave my dolls more realistic hairstyles which I loved. Adding to my repertoire of techniques always jazzes me up!

Fast forward a few more years. While attending a sewing convention, I saw a fellow doll artist using a fantastic machine to create costumes for her dolls. I watched, mesmerized, as she combined random raw materials into a sheet of fabric with her magic machine. Of course I was filled with a dozen questions which she patiently answered.

After the convention, I visited my local sewing machine dealer to see if they’d ever heard of this thing called a needle felting machine. Not only had they heard of it, they had one on display. At the time they were quite expensive, so I spent some time debating my “need” for this incredible machine. I read every article and looked up every website I could find about machine needle felting until I was sure that indeed I HAD to own one.

As luck would have it, prices dropped and I ordered a 7-needle Baby Lock Embellisher. My embellisher and I had quite a healthy learning curve! I have to admit that I broke a few needles in the beginning until one day something clicked in my technique and I haven’t broken a needle since.

I love felting wool roving. Every time I begin with wads of colorful wool fiber that I transform into my own unique fabric, I marvel at the ease with which it happens! I love this machine!

I still have my needle felted figure that I made long before I knew about felting machines. I love him, but I seriously doubt that I’ll ever create another. I will, however, always use my felting machine because I love the magic I create from bundles of colorful wool roving.

It’s time to download your class notes and get ready for some serious fun. 😉 I’ll see you in the video class.

Remember to Get Creative today! It’s Easy!
Barb

 

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Video Class

PREVIEW: How to Needle Felt Silky Fabrics – s03e07

In this class you will learn how to transform hard-to-handle silky fabrics with a felting machine. When you start with the right foundation fabric, a good felting machine and lots of colorful silky fabrics, you’re on your way to creating something beautiful and fun, too. You won’t believe what you can do with this machine!

Members, simply click the purple button below to watch the video class.

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As a little girl, I remember admiring colorful pieces of felt stitched into ornaments, pillows, Christmas stockings and table runners lovingly created by my adopted grandmother. I was fascinated by the texture and threads and touch of this unique textile. I never dreamed that one day I would learn how to create such beautiful fabric myself!

Felt is created by tangling and matting fibers. The process is easily accomplished with animal fibers like wool because of its scale structure. When scales collapse, felting occurs. The more that fibers are tangled together, the thicker and denser the fabric becomes.

The two most common methods for creating felt involve water, soap and agitation or by mechanical means. Both types of felting methods use compression to successfully tangle fibers into a strong cohesive fabric. Wet felting is possible only with animal hair like sheep’s wool, mohair from goats and angora from rabbits. Synthetics and plant fibers will not wet felt. They may be captured within some of the layers of a wet-felted fabric, but they themselves cannot actually be wet-felted.

Needle felting, on the other hand, requires no water or soap, but it does necessitate some type of mechanical means to cause the tangling process to occur. Felting needles may be used singly, in a multi-needle handheld tool or with various industrial machines. Portable felting machines are now easily available, thanks to home sewing machine manufacturers.

So, how does the needle felting process happen? Special needles, commonly called barbed needles, are housed within a special holder that attaches to a needle felting machine. In actuality, the needles are notched rather than barbed. The notches face in a downward direction toward the tip of the needle. When in use, they push the fiber to cause the felting process. When the needles pull up through the developing fabric, the smoothness of the needle will not disturb the felting. After fibers are successfully tangled and compressed, the resulting fabric is surprisingly strong.

Needle felting can be accomplished with just a single needle. Often this is used to create hand sculpted three-dimensional pieces or to root wool hair into a doll's head.

Hand held tools, which hold several needles at one time, have become popular because it cuts the time needed to create small two-dimensional sheets of felt or to use for hand basting fibers prior to machine needle felting. Household felting machines, however, make the needle felting process thousands of times faster and that means you can create fabulous fabrics quickly and easily.

Did you know that it’s also possible to machine needle felt synthetic and silky fabrics? Indeed it is! That’s what this class is all about. Download your class notes, watch the video class and get ready to create something so unique that people will always ask, “How did you do that?!”

Remember to Get Creative today! It’s Easy!
Barb

 

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