Felted Collar

 This is the felted collar I created after receiving a wonderful email from Cousin.  It appeared on their blog last week and I wanted to repost it here.

I wanted to share with you some of my favorite fiber and jewelry components and how I mesh them into wearable art.

 This collar showcases so much of what I love, beads, rhinestones, felt, fabric and buttons.

 It is different from every angle.

 When I create something like this I normally have just one starting point.  In this case, I had this amazing neon pink felt that I was dying to use.

 I managed to find another mixed bag of artisan fibers and roving that I knew would work perfectly with my neon pink.

 I created a collar shape and piled on the additional felt roving.  At this point I simply hand felted my collar manually.  This hand felting ensures that I like where everything is placed before I bring my piece to my machine.

 My Janome felting machine does the work of many!  It quickly felted all my layers.

 I love to start with everything piled so high and then it is felted soft and much flatter.

 Then the real fun begins.  I start choosing what I want to hand sew to my collar.

 Cousin sent me a wonderful assortment of beads and they were beautiful additions adding sparkle and colour to my collar.

The vintage women were printed on Jacquard’s inkjet printing fabric.  It is soft and easy to sew.

I hope you like this collar.  It looks fabulous when I wear it and is truly one of a kind.