Adventures in Felting

Is there anything more scary than a blank page? Especially one someone else might look at? I've been staring at this one, my first blog post, for about an hour--well, not just staring at it. I've been going to all kinds of other blogs to get inspiration. Isn't helping. Not at all, actually! The blogs I like are…personal…I’m not that person, I’m this person. Sigh…this is getting worse and worse--

I've been thinking about blogging for about...okay, I can't tell you how long because it's way too embarrassing. My new website launched yesterday and one of my criteria for the developers was that it have a blog component. So I can't use THAT as an excuse any more.

I’m just going to put up a picture of something I’m working on and tell you about it. Seems like as good a place to start as any.

These are bits of kimono silk from a bag of scraps I bought at a quilt show, and one piece of upholstery fabric from an old sample book. I've use Misty Fuse to stabilize and attach them to a free-motion quilting class sample. I've got piles of these samples. So happy to be using them up!	This is the same piece after adding other fibers to the surface and distressing it in a felting machine. Don't know what the heck I'm talking about? A felting machine doesn't use thread--it has 1 or more barbed needles that punch through the layers. The longer you work the surface, the more integrated the fibers become.
Here are some close-ups. Stabilizing the fabrics first keeps the barbed needles from gobbling up the fabric, allowing me to keep the integrity of some of the images. This is just way too much fun! I cut the piece into strips of various widths and they are hanging out on my design wall in my workroom. Eventually I'll figure out what I want to do with them. I'm open to suggestions!