Felting on my Pfaff - it may become an addiction!

This month at our Sewing Sisters event, I featured adding Fiber Arts to our designs.  In a previous post I shared the felted bag that I had designed and created.  

Sandy K shared a project that she has felted with fleece and that inspired me to make one of my own.  Her project was an Embroidery Club project from 2014 and perhaps some of you may have actually made this knitting basket.

Since I was busy doing other projects at that time, I missed an excellent opportunity.  So I decided to take advantage of this new found project and make my own.  The original project was made with felt but I loved Sandy's project so much that I decided to use fleece instead.

Since I didn't have the directions at the time, I decided to 'wing' it!  The  first step was to hoop a layer of Aqua Magic in my 360 x 260 mm hoop. I placed my white fleece right side down and then the pink fleece right side down. 

I pinned another layer of Aqua Magic to the 3 layers to hold it in place.

I selected my design on my icon, but this is an sample from the Endless Felting collection #487 from Pfaff.

I duplicated it and lined them up precisely using the X and Y coordinates on the machine.  I sent it to the software to make sure it was lined up accurately.

I then stitched it out and it was quite large, over 45,000 stitches and I slowed the machine down and it seemed to take forever to finish.  I removed most of the stabilizer, rinsed it completely and dried it in the dryer.

Then Sandy's email arrived with the directions! LOL!  Apparently I needed one more design as this basket required 3 repeats to make the basket.  SO this time I followed the directions and used my 180 x 130 mm metal hoop and NO stabilizer.  I used Precise Positioning and was able to line it up perfectly!

I then followed the directions to finish it, albeit not quite exactly what the directions said.  Sadly, I am not 100% happy with my project, so next time I will read the directions first!  I filled my fleece felted basket with some yarn and two projects I am going to work on for my grands who live in colder climates.

Did I tell you that I am addicted to the felting technique? No?... well I am!  Expect to see more projects from me with this fabulous embroidery set.

Director of Designs and Creativity