TESTING NEW BAMBOO FELT

I've been anxious to experiment with National Nonwoven's improved Bamboo Felt ever since I received some samples recently.

While working with their first batch, I realized the colors bled, it wrinkled terribly (perhaps not a huge issue for a wall quilt), but it also pilled.

The colorfast problems seemed to be solved now, and so far, I see no evidence of pilling or wrinkling. However, I'm only working with small pieces at the moment. It's still wonderfully soft and easy to needle, but it's about half the thickness of the initial felt I worked with.

So for my purposes, besides stabilizing with Pellon's lightweight non-fusible interfacing, I added extra strength to what will be the main background by machine stitching an uneven grid.

Next, I added a few purple design elements....heavily stitched to the tobacco color background. This will be a small piece......probably measuring no larger than 8" x 10" with the red border. The embellishments will be the focus of the piece. I began with a carved piece of mesquite wood...attaching it using beadwork running through 5 holes.

I didn't like what I did, so I took it all off and started over. I'm still not satisfied....... It's been so hectic here that I haven't had a huge chunk of time to work, perhaps today..... Working small should mean quicker results, however, getting the right balance of design in a limited space is more of a challenge to me since I always want to 'over' embellish!

Stay tuned......