On Saturday morning I was up bright and early, waving Jack off to a day of partying with his friends and making packed lunches for me and Sam. Sam was off to his first overnight camp with cubs and was super excited while I was in a similar state about what the day had in store for me - a felt making workshop with the guild of Spinners.
We started by cutting two plastic resists from heavy duty bubble wrap.
We then laid two layers of fleece over the shapes - one north/south and one east/west.
Next we wet that layer and turned the pattern over, before repeating the layering and wetting on that side.
The next step was to put some white fleece over what was to become the bottom of the slipper, so that it had a cushioned sole. This was then covered up with another two coloured layers and wet again. At this point we marked the sole (so we would know which side to cut into) - I used a big pink spot!
Once we had turned over and repeated the layering and wetting on the top side we had two wet shapes ready to be felted.
The shapes were parcelled up with netting and tied to a rolling pin and then the hard work started. Rolling, wetting, soaping, undoing, turning and repeating again and again until we had done every combination you could think of and my arms refused to roll any more.
Finally, we were allowed to undo our parcel, cut into the top and remove the resist and at last we had something that vaguely looked like a pair of slippers.
If I had thought the first part was hard work, nothing had prepared me for the effort that now had to be put into shrinking my giant floppy shapes into beautifully shaped and fitting slippers. An hour of rubbing, plunging in boiling water and bleeding knuckles later, they were done.
I absolutely love them and have plans to make some for the boys (with their help) in the summer holidays. It's just like magic - I adore the way the colours mix and mingle as you rub, it's a lot like painting with wool. In fact I will show you another time how closely these slippers resemble my handmade paper art that I made when I was doing textiles at art college, maybe I have discovered a whole new way to express myself artistically - on my feet!
