Fab Felted Flowers

(This description of how we made these fab flowers is more to remind me than a detailed tutorial)

These are the main ingredients: roving in red, darker red and black, resist (a piece of plastic packing material, it needs to be flexible and cut into a circle a bit bigger than the proposed poppy size) plus a tea towel and some bubble wrap (note to self, white tea towel next time, working with red on red is a tad difficult)

Put the disc on one end of the bubble wrap, on the towel.  Pull fine sections off the roving and lay them so the ends are in the centre hole, spreading out over the edge.

Spray, this helps to anchor them to each other for now (warm water and a little bit of liquid soap)

Flip the other half of the bubble wrap over the top, and flip the bubble wrap sandwich over - lift off the top half of bubble wrap, now you can see the resist and just the ends of the wool.

 

 Fold all the outer ends of the wool around the edge and towards the side 2 centre, spray

Repeat with side 2 up, and flip and fold the ends onto side 1, spray

Lay just a few strands over the  top of the wool on side 1, spray

 

Repeat the first steps again: strands onto side one,

 flip

 and fold and spray

Then strands onto side two, flip and fold and spray.  If you want to add a few strands of darker red now it the time to do so.

loosely bunch up some black wool, and add it in three points near the middle.  Spray and flip

Put the bubble wrap back over the top, spray the wrap and start stroking the flower through the bubble wrap, gently so as not to risk moving the black sections.  You need to stroke for at least 10 minutes, moving your work around as you go, so you are stroking in all directions.  Flip over, and repeat

When the fibres have all felted together (you cant pull any off), fold it in half and roll firmly between your hands,  then fold back on itself and repeat.  This will have distorted your circle into an oblong, so fold in half (at 90 degrees to the first fold) both ways ad roll again to restore the circle.  It will have shrunk, but the resist wont, so it will look a bit bloated.

Cut around the edge, but just inside the edge, so one side is a bit bigger than the other.  Once you remove the resist it should look something like this (there should be just one piece as the centre will have felted all the way through)

To create the petals, cut the top circle into thirds, from edge to about an inch off the centre.  Do the same to the other side, but offset (see dotted lines)

 Snip the corners off each section

Scrunch in your hand and roll firmly to rough up the cut edges. stretch each leaf width ways so it falls into waves

Take some black roving and wrap it a bit like winding a ball of knitting wool to make a small ball for the centre, roll it between your fingertips for ages, then gently between the balls of your hands until it has felted.

I've almost certainly forgotten some stages, but I plan to have another go, so I'll edit thee notes as appropriate

Sew the ball onto the front, and a pin onto the back, and as always, wear your poppy with pride!