jewellery | Teri Berry Textiles

One of my best customers for my 3D-printed felting tools, a fellow felt teacher in the US, asked if I could make a smaller version of the wand tool for making jewellery. I had previously investigated making the wand longer and narrower towards the tip but the tips kept breaking, I don’t make a lot of jewellery or small items so the idea was abandoned.

I mentioned the request to Mr TB who suggested a couple of possible solutions for the fragile tips. He printed 2 of them for me and I have been testing them this week. I may be biased but think they are pretty good, I have been using them quite aggressively and they are still in tact and working as I had hoped.

For the tests I decided to make set of felted rings. Normally I use a bundle of pencils held together with an elastic band but this maker pen with a tapered barrel came to hand first. Pencils / pens are ideal because you can alter the size of your ring by adding more pencils to the bundle, then remove them one by one as the felt fulls and the ring shrinks down.

Wrapping wool around the pen before adding soapy water and gently rubbing

Once the felt was starting to shrink I transferred the ring to the tool and fulled the inside of the ring

This is how much the ring shrank, the inside of the ring was wide enough to stretch around the widest part of the pen at the start

Looking for more pens to make a larger ring I came across this beaker instead…

I made a small felted ball to finish the set and make a pendant, which layout do you like best?

The fulling tool just needs a couple of minor tweaks and a name (any ideas?), another round of testing and it will be ready to join the others.

Apologies for the poor quality of these photos, they were taken in my current studio (the garage) and the light in there is awful. The new studio is coming along well though. Another month and the floor will be tiled, the kitchenette and shelving installed and all my fluff moved from the garage to its new home 🙂

The rest of the reno is progressing too, our new kitchen is half installed, the bathrooms and deck are nearly finished and this week the builders are putting in a retaining wall.

The house and garden this week – spot the difference?

In between painting and moving garden plants I have not had much time for felting so have been getting my “fix” through teaching…

A private, beginners bag class…

These ladies know how to felt in style – home made G&Ts! 🙂

Mosaic felting at the Auckland Creative Fibre retreat…

I also had the pleasure of teaching a felted pod class in collaboration with Deaf Aotearoa last month but I’m afraid I forgot to take any photos. This was a wonderful experience and I have no hesitation in recommending teaching this way if you get the opportunity, most of the participants could lip read but we also had a sign language interpreter with us. The hardest part for me, was trying not to talk while demonstrating, I am so used to explaining what I am doing with my hands I had to keep checking myself to explain first, so everyone could watch the interpreter and then demonstrate with the wool.

I’d better get back to painting…. happy felting!

I think I mentioned that I started a City and Guilds course in Feltmaking in August this year. It’s a distance learning course with ArtyBird, a textile school in Lancashire and so far it has been interesting, it has challenged me to work in ways that I probably would never have considered on my own, especially the design elements.

Part of this month’s assignment is to create ropes and balls, with a leaning towards making felt jewellery. So far I have created a necklace and cuff that I am proud of and a bracelet that I’m still feeling indifferent toward and a second necklace that was nothing short of a disaster. Here are the pieces I like and would be prepared to wear myself:

I still want to add some stitching (staggered blanket stitch) to the border of the cuff.

This is the bracelet I neither like or dislike:

And this is the disaster. It started out looking very promising with different coloured rope cores encased within a dark brown shell – it started life as a thick rope that was cut into discs and sewn together in a string. This is it before it became a mushy mess, all the colours are still clear and the discs haven’t turned into amorphous blobs yet:

I tried all sorts to get the discs to harden. Wet felting for over an hour, on and in the roller blind, rubbing on bubble wrap and the blind, felter’s rolling pin and finally the tumble drier. All that has happened is the colours have all blended together to shades of a dark brown, the discs have lost their shape and they still feel mushy!!

Not exactly jewellery (yet) but this is a multicoloured felt ball, perhaps with some beads and stitching it could make a nice pendant?

Teri Berry Textiles

All things felting and fibre

Category Archives: jewellery

Necessity is the Mother of Invention

Felt Ropes and Balls