Josephine’s wet-felted flower with green sepals, orange carpel and stamens and a long stem.
June 5, 2013 Wednesday Morning. This morning, our craft group gathered outside in garden of the Company of Angels school store of the Waldorf School of Orange County, Costa Mesa, California, USA. This was our last craft group meeting for the 2012-2013 school year. Thank you Christine Newell and Rachel Skelly for organizing our craft group this year!
Christine Newell taught us how to make wet-felted flowers with long stems. It was quick and fun! Scroll down to see what we did today. – Jzin.
June 5, 2013. Gisela’s dramatically beautiful hot-house flower wet-felted that morning.
Click below enter the gallery of our past craft group projects:
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- Our creative journey today: Today we made Wet-felted flowers with long stems.
- Photos from last week’s Nuno-felted scarf project
- More Crafting Opportunities…
- Christine Newell’s Children Summer Crafting Camp.
- Peacemakers Country Store in Costa Mesa: Click here to view their list of classes for adults and children.
- Jzin’s Handmade Flower Fairy Giveaway!!! Open worldwide. Ends June 10, 2013. Enter here
- Do you own a blog, Etsy store, family business, soap box, etc? Place a free ad on “Support Our Local Southern Californian Waldorf Community Page.
- Gallery of past crafts from our craft group.
Today
Due to the popularity of last week’s wet-felting flowers craft project, Christine Newell is showing us today how to wet-felt flowers with long stem. Below are the wet-felted flowers made last week, displayed on Rachel Skelly’s mosaic bench in the garden at the Company of Angels store.
Rachel brought in examples of wet-felted flowers with long stems as examples and inspirations for our craft group project today.
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Making The Flowers
Unlike last week’s wet-felted flower project, where we made “rose shaped” flowers with starting with three whorls, this week’s flower has only 1 whorl. Thus, it is more of a trumpet shaped flower.
Christine arranging wool roving on Gisela’s flower.
Janet layering wool roving to make two separate, large wet-felted flowers.
Here’s a sneak peak of Janet’s beautiful completed wet-felted flowers with long stems.
The larger the diameter of the dry wool roving you lay down, the deeper your flower “trumpet” will be.
Ah! The joy of wet-felting!
Gisela gently pushes down on her bubble wrap to saturate her all her wool fibers with hot soapy water.
After sufficient felting of the petals (not shown), Gisela added sex organs to her flowers…
Oooh lovely! Gisela’s sultry hot-housed flower with pronounced languid pistils and stamens.
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Making Flower Stems by Rolling Inside Sushi Mats
Lay down a long piece of dry roving inside your sushi mat.
Leaving one end dry (for attaching to your flower), spray the rest of your “stem” roving with hot, soapy water.
Christine rolling roving on sushi mat. This method gives nicely rounded stems.
My flower stem. One end is kept dry for attaching to the base of my flower which I will be making next.
Keep rolling your stem until it is fully felted (leaving one end dry and unfelted, that end will be the attachment point of the stem to the flower). You will know your stem is fully felted by applying the “pinch test”: When you pinch your stem and gently pull up, if the wool fibers remain stuck to the stem, you are done felting. On the contrary, when you lift, the wool fibers get lifted off the stem, it means you have more rolling to do.
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Attaching long stems to our flowers
Jzin’s flower with green sepal arrangement. After this flower is wet-felted, this side would receive the dry end of the wet-felted long stem.
A small hole is cut in the bubble wrap just large enough to allow the long stem to poke through as we manually wet-felt the flower.
Tada! Alas, that is the secret to wet-felting a flower with a long stem!
Be careful not to cut a hole bigger than needed in your bubble wrap. If the hole is too big, the areas under the hole will not get sufficiently wet-felted.
Wet-felting the flower petals by leaving the stem poking through a hole made in the bubble wrap.
My flower stem attached to the sepal and petals.
After (much more and rigorous) adequate manual felting, Christine squeezed and shaped my flower as a final step.
My newly wet-felted flower, resting…
Here is my flower, blossomed.
Hmm… something does not feel right. I prefer flowers with several whorls (like the ones with three whorls we made last week) over a trumpet shaped flower with a single whorl of fused petals like this one above (looks less realistic to me).
Mother and child wet-felting together.
Solana’s flower tied up into shape and drying in the sun.
Nona and Debbie stopping by craft group. Notice that Nona is wearing the wet-felted flower pin made at craft group last week. Debbie is working on her doll from Christine’s 16 inch Waldorf doll workshop.
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Results from This Morning’s Wet-Felting Work
Solana with her long-stemmed wet-felted flower handmade from this morning’s work.
Another view, again, of Janet’s dramatic white flower…
My trumpet-shaped flower drying on the honeysuckle hedge.
Christine holding Josephine’s white flower with long light green sepals and orange carpel and stamens.
Gaby’s sweet purple and blue flower with maroon striations.
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Jzin’s Handmade Flower Fairy Giveaway
Here is another view of my freshly made wet felted flower (on the bottom left of the picture). Click on the picture below to enter my wet-felted flower fairy Giveaway ending June 10, 2013.
The Bluebell fairy (made by my daughter) has a little sleigh bell hidden inside her skirt.
When turned upside down, these fairies are flowers!
You can also purchase my flower fairies on my Etsy store by clicking on the image below…
Please “Like” CastleofCostaMesa Facebook page so you will be in the know of my upcoming seasonal giveaways.
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Christine Newell’s Children Summer Craft Camp
Christine will be teaching craft camp for children this summer!
- Location: Company of Angels store. Waldorf School of Orange County, 2350 Canyon Street, Costa Mesa, California.
- Dates: July 8/9/10/11/12 and Aug 12/13/14/15/16
- Time: 9:30am to 1:30pm
- Designed for Grades 1, 2, 3 and 4. Maximum 10 students
- Cost: $125 plus $50 supply fee
Crafts:
Wet felting
Dry felting
Sun printing
Tie dyeing
Hand sewing
Batiking
Marblelizing paper
Basket making
The list goes on …
If you are interested in registering for either of the 2 camps or just need more info, please e-mail Christine at [email protected] or cell (949) 244- 4663
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Piecemakers Summer Crafting Camps in Costa Mesa
Peacemakers Country Store in Costa Mesa: Click here to view their list of classes for adults and children.
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Handmade Dolls by Castle of Costa Mesa
Click here to view my other handmade dolls. I take custom orders. You can contact me on Etsy. My store name is CastleofCostaMesa. Thank you!
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Southern California Waldorf Community Page
Let’s support our friends in our local Southern California Waldorf Community…
Please “Like” Us on Facebook
I giveaway my Handmade Dolls periodically. Please “Like” my facebook page so you will be informed when I announce the next handmade doll giveaway. Thanks!
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