I've been wanting make one of these seasonal tree wall hangings for a while.
Two home schooling family friends, with whom I was having a craft days at their places last year, had these felted trees that they had made on their walls. I would look at those pictures longingly and kept thinking to myself I really need to pull my finger out and make one of these for my home. I always admired the seasonal wool tree pictures that I saw on blogs and in a book, More Magic Wool by Angelika Wolk-Gerche, which I bought a few years ago. So it has been on my craft 'to do' list for a while now.
Last week there was a felting day with a family support group that Lou and I are in. Just over a year ago Lou was diagnosed with PDD-NOS / Atypical Autism . This is the first time that I have ever mentioned it on my blog. I never really had the desire to talk about it so openly to the bloggerverse. This blog has mainly been about my crafty adventures, not my personal (well, Lou's) stuff. I have to say that blogging and looking at blogs has been my escape from this reality to keep me sane...:)
If you are a regular reader, you probably noticed that I've changed my blog name. The name Loopity Lou, which I started with a few years ago, came up because while I was breast feeding Lou, I would knit. Lou was on the boob a lot so I would pass the time by knitting. Being a bub, Lou would grab at the wool and get tangled in loops of wool. My nick-name for him was 'Loopity Lou'. I used to have to explain that to people who know us when I would mention the name of the blog. I would get a few odd looks knowing what was going on with Lou. I thought that now we have moved our home and had a huge change in our lives, my blog need a new name too. Anyway, I'm babbling on and getting away from what I was posting about.....
The family support group does activities for families (well, MUMs) and Wet Felting was one of those. We were meant to make a banner to represent our family. There was only a few of us there and I asked if I could do my own thing, which was OK. I've done wet felting a few times so I kind of knew what I was doing. I brought my own wool along just in case they didn't have the colour range that I would like to work with.
It was just as well I did, as I didn't like the colours that they had. I used their white pre-felted back, for which I'm grateful as it saved me so much time layering the wool to make the back of the wall hanging. The rest of the wool was from my stash from when I was needle felting. It was so much fun and a workout. I needle felted the tree into place lightly, being careful not to break my needle because I didn't bring some foam to needle felt into. I think needle felting the tree into place on the pre-felted backing help it to not distort in the wet felting process. I was worried that the tree would smear all over the place and be a waste of wool.
I'm happy with how it turned out. Now I have to find some old branches on the ground and sew them onto the top and bottom of the wool picture and hang it up on the wall. And as the seasons change, change the wool lying on top of it according to the season.
