felted wool quilts

Wow, we're having another cool day, so I'm back on the third floor working on this blog. Many years ago I became fascinated with felted wool, which is really dense wool that you can cut into shapes and it doesn't fray. I had seen lots of wool patterns in Quilt Magazines but after searching all of Winnipeg I couldn't find any. I think I first found some 12 inch sheets of it in Grand Forks, North Dakota. Over the years I've done many felt wall hangings and small pieces that could be framed. It's much easier to find the wool now, but still no one has it in Winnipeg. I always pick some up at Quilt shows that have out of town fabric vendors.

I use rust coloured embroidery floss to do the blanket stitching on black fabric and black floss when stiching on lighter coloured fabrics. For the backing I either use black wool fabric or flannel, which is less expensive. I bought the wool for this light coloured wall hanging in Vancouver, I bought tons, because they had tons, I was like a kid in a candy store. I think they even called it wool candy. The pattern in a scaled down version of a pattern a friend was working on. I really like this quilt.

I worked on this wall hanging one winter, during Taylor's swimming lessons.

This is the wall hanging I'm working on completing right now. It was a block of the month quilt that I signed up for. I paid $12.95 and each month I got a flannel background, pattern and felt to make a square. There were 3 of them I didn't like so I never made them. Sometimes I didn't like the felt colours so I bleached some, dyed some or used leftovers from my little stash. I thought I had lost the squares, but thankfully they were hiding on the third floor. I recently sewed the blocks together, now I need to add borders and quilt. I think I started this about ten years ago!