Wet Felted Poppies

 My first wet felting attempt which I've done a bit of hand stitching on. This little piece is only 14 x 10cm.

 I haven't done any sewing on this piece yet which is approximately 30 x 30cm.  I'm going to put a piece of interfacing behind it and machine stitch the outline of the hills and trees to bring them out a bit.  The poppies in the foreground I'll hand stitch on with french knots and straight stitches.  Have to see how that goes.

 This is how the 2 pieces looked to begin with. Here I had pulled pieces of plain wool roving in 2 layers in a cross hatch pattern over a piece of screen on a piece of bubble wrap.

 Here is my 3rd layer of dyed wool fibres that I'm attempting to make into a landscape.

 The red bits were from a piece of pre-felted wool that I cut out for poppies.
 

When I was finished with laying out the wool fibres, I placed another piece of screen over top which I then proceeded to wet and soap down with warm soapy water.  I turned over the screen wool fibre sandwich and soaped and sponged the other side as well.

After soaping and wetting I very carefully removed the felted pieces from the screening, rinsed them under the tap with warm water and then rolled up in bubble wrap around a piece of a swimming noodle. We rolled our noodles 15 minutes one way and 15 minutes another and then did it again and yet again as we worked at agitating the wool fibres so they would stick together and the wool fibres would felt.  I tied my roll up with pieces of old nylon to take home with me and then unroll.  It took a few days for the pieces to be completely dry.  I found my first felting experience to be a huge amount of fun and am quite pleased with how my pieces turned out. I have to give Karen and Rhonda a tremendous amount of thanks for providing all the wool and walking us through the whole process.