New wool purse

**rjsnitz** · 06-07-2009, 03:41 PM

This is my newest wool purse. This has an embroidery machine design on it that was supposed to be applique, but instead of adding fabric I needle felted by hand wool roving in it's place. I love the look of the orange on the black. The black is wool I felted in the washing machine and the pattern is my own. It's lined with a quilters cotton with a matching covered button on the front. The embroidery design is from a lady from South Africa who is in the states right now hosting trunk shows and I have her coming to our new quilt shop on June 30. I can't wait for Santi to see what I did with her embroidery design.
Roxanne

**jeanm** · 06-07-2009, 04:11 PM

That is beautiful, even though I have no idea how it was done

Jean

**MTRuth** · 06-07-2009, 06:40 PM

Beautiful! Could you explain a bit more about the process? I'm not sure if you mean that you did a portion of the flower with machine embroidery and then needled it on or if you needle felted the entire flower?

**rjsnitz** · 06-07-2009, 07:51 PM

Since it's an applique design for machine embroidery, you stitch out the first stitching which would normally give you an outline for you to lay your fabric down on so you would know how big to make it. After that has stitched, I take it off the machine but do not unhoop it. I then use my felting tools to felt down my wool roving inside that first stitching. This design only had the one flower that was to be fabric so the big flower is the only place there is roving felted. When I had the roving felted the way I wanted it (I combined a couple of colors to give some dimension) then I put it back on the emb. machine and let it stitch out the rest of the design. So in some places it stitched over the roving which helps to hold it down also. I love machine embroidery and love felting so trying to combine the two is perfect.

My work is nowhere near any of you but my purses sell so that is the main part. I have a show Fathers Day and it's pretty artsy so we'll see. Economy kinda scares me..........
Roxanne

**MrsG2003** · 06-08-2009, 04:32 AM

Roxanne,

It is stunning

I just acquired a spare sewing machine and am going to see if I can find a felting foot attachment for it.

Louise

**jeanm** · 06-08-2009, 04:40 AM

Louise
When you find out where to get that felting foot attachment will you let me know? I recently broke down and bought an economical Singer sewing machine to replace two old broken ones. Don't sew much anymore, but heck, now and then one NEEDS one

Jean

**MTRuth** · 06-08-2009, 02:13 PM

Roxanne - I think the combination is lovely. Thanks for the explanation.

Jean - usually you need to go directly to the people who make your sewing machine to see if they have a felting attachment for your model. The attachments are all different and won't be interchangeable between machines. I'd look online for your model and see if they have one.

**jeanm** · 06-08-2009, 02:16 PM

Thanks Ruth... a good idea.

Jean

**Shepherdess** · 06-08-2009, 04:10 PM

Ruth and others someone does make a conversion kit for old machines. Can't remember off the top of my head. I think its the same people that make the tiny portable machine.
Ann

**rjsnitz** · 06-08-2009, 04:28 PM

I know that was the way I was going to go as have my moms old machine that I could convert until I kept reading about all the lint, the attachment was $80, and my DH gave me my felting machine for Christmas. The felting machines are sooooooooooooooo lightweight and take up so little room compared to a reg. machine. I just shove mine out of the way if I'm using the front of the table it sits on. They're so small compared to the reg machines too. I'm happy I went the route I did.

Plus it should come with some lessons maybe at the shop to give you even more ideas of how to use it for other things, such as felting quilt batting together to piece it if your batt isn't big enough.
Roxanne