This has been my latest artistic endeavor. Ever since I started felting I wanted to make one of these.  In Kyrgyzystan they are called Shyrdak, in Kazakstan there is also a similar product. These rugs are cut, pieced and quilted from plain sheets of felt, which seriously increases the amount of work hours need to create them as opposed to rugs with felted in designs.  Shyrdaks are a traditional art that has been passed down for generations.  Like many traditional arts these days, it is being kept alive by a few conscientious artisans.  Here is a video of women from the Altyn Kol Women’s Handicraft Cooperative in Kyrgyzystan  making shyrdaks.

shrydak making video

My shyrdak began a while ago when I experimented with and indigo dye pot and dipped half a sheet of Icelandic felt into it. 

Indigo is a magical dye that is green when you pull it out of the pot and as it hits the air turns to blue before your eyes.

My next step was to cut a design from paper and cut the same design from both the white and the blue felt.

Pieces are then swapped into the opposite color blocks.  The felt is then sewn back together. 

And then two oppositely spun cords are couched down to hide the seam.

The two blocks are then sewn together and the whole thing is then quilted to another layer of felt.

It has been an amazing experience making a small sample of shyrdak.  The craft reminds me of the level of work that goes into a traditional American quilt.  Both crafts are passed from mother to daughter, usually done in community, and have a rich history of meaning associated with the traditional patterns.  The design I chose represents a ram’s horn.  Great atention is given to creating a design that has ballence in its possitive and negative images.  In mine the blue design creates an almost identical design in the white and vice versa. 

Yesterday I spent “Black Friday” making these felt luminaries.  Perhaps for sale, perhaps for christmas gifts.  Either way my efforts will fund my christmas list.   These are made from 100% Michigan Icelandic wool.  The white was felted from raw, unwashed fleece and the colors I washed, dyed and combed myself before felting the leaves and berries.  Of course by the end all the fleece is well washed because of the amount of soap I use in the felting process.

The thin white felt is made using the resist method, then molded around pint and half pint mason jars.  This is my first attempt at what could be considered cobweb felt, felt so thin that the structure of the hairs becomes visible and part of the art of the piece.  It is difficult to photograph with cameras available to me how these look with a lit candle inside.  The light shines through the thin spots in the felt, showing the crimp of the wool.  Each one is unique.

Here is a group of them before I sewed the holly and berries on.  I plan on making some in different colors for different seasons.  I expect that dark colors will block too much light, but may be used as accent colors.

Here is a close-up.  Notice the authentic “vegetable matter.”

If you would like to purchase some of these visit my Etsy store.  Or if you are in the Ann Arbor area we can make the hand off here and save on shipping charges.

For my “real job”, the one that pays my bills, I am a preschool teacher.  This week we held a special event, a Fall Festival for the the families.  There were activities like pumpkin bowling, a hay bale climbing hill, cider and doughnuts and fall crafts.  Naturally felting had to be included because felting is the original fall craft.  Sheep are usually shorn in the early fall and naturally felt making cultures would make the bulk of their felt in the fall so that it could be used in the coming winter.  Here’s what we did.

In the week prior to the event the children helped me make prefelts.  I chose fall colors from my stash.  All in different kinds of wool. 

Then I asked festival participants to cut leaf shapes from the prefelt and throw it on the felting mat.   Small children cut mostly confetti shapes while adults made more leaf like shapes.  It did not matter as we wanted it to look like leaves on the ground, some of which will be broken.

When we had enough leaves the design was covered in three thin layers of Icelandic batting.  We then sprinkled it with soapy water, and rolled it up.

We took turns kicking the roll back and forth.  Since this was an event for little kids, we didn’t have time to finish the felting, but I took it home and finished rolling it in about an hour, thanks to the lovely fast felting nature of the Icelandic wool.

The result surprised me in that I didn’t think some of the wools would felt as well as the Icelandic.  I don’t tend to mix wool types as they will not felt at the same rate.  However all the colors seems to be fully felted into the base.  I think the Icelandic was good at reaching through the other wools and pulling them in fast.  I also may have helped that we used prefelts, so all the colors had a head start on the Icelandic.  This project has made me reconsider mixing a few wools now and then to see how it turns out.

This cute little basket is actually the baby version of a bigger one that sold before I could take a picture of it.  Fortunately I sold it to a friend, so maybe I can get a good picture of her with her with her basket in her garb.  This basket is made of natural colored Icelandic wool, grown on a small farm less than 100 miles from me.

I was thinking awhile back about my style of bag making and where it comes from.  Most of the bags I make are the envelope style, and in essence they are felt emulating a fabric form.  When I’m making felt with historic re-creation in mind, most of these smaller accessory pieces are conjecture.  I may have an example of a bag in a painting, but it does not tell me what the bag is made of or how it was made.  Since felt is so moldable I find it interesting that I sometimes think of my work in terms of other mediums, felt in the form that fabric or pottery would normally take.  In this case, its felt in the shape of a basket.  What strikes me about this kind of 3D felt vessel is that it is much more true to the nature of felt and how it wants to behave.  To me this form feels less like felt trying to be something else, and more like felt being and doing what felt does best.