Thursday, June 05, 2025

"For the Love of Wool" Wreath


For the last few months, I've been working on a wool sculpture to exhibit alongside my crafting friends from my local Maker Space. The art pieces we created are currently on display at Melton Mowbray Museum as part of The Great Big Green Week and will remain there until June 16, 2025.

Everything we created was made with a focus on zero-waste, environmentally friendly practices, and swapping and sharing skills to promote community and keep crafts alive for future generations.

For my main exhibition piece, I decided to create a variation of my Joyful Wreath, incorporating some slightly different elements that I couldn’t fit in when I made it back in 2022.


I wanted this wreath to be a little moodier than the Joyful Wreath I made previously.  I intended for the colours to be a little more sophisticated, so each one was blended with the addition of 10% black wool to add a little shade and complexity.

I wanted to celebrate the potential and beauty of wool - a fibre that is undervalued, renewable, and compostable, but is often discarded in favour of synthetic plastic alternatives.


For the base, I spun some worsted-weight Blue Faced Leicester, which I divided into four balls so that I could knit the base quickly by holding four yarns together.


The base was knitted as a flat piece…


… which I then sewed around a 30cm metal ring base (affiliate link), stuffing it with wool combing waste as I worked my way round.


As I had only 4 months to create my wool wreath and wanted it to be as maximalist as possible, I covered just over half of my ring in wool and knitted fabric, securing it at the ends with Gorilla Tape (affiliate link).  I also liked the idea of making an asymmetric wool sculpture this time, as I wanted it to be very different to my original Joyful Wreath.

I’d spun two different yarns that I planned to make all of my elements with…


A variegated yarn…


… and a second yarn with much longer colour sections that I intended to separate out into all the component colours :-


Both of these yarns were spun using varying proportions of cyan, magenta, and yellow merino wool, blended with 10% black.


To begin assembling my wreath, I used the variegated yarn to crochet around some USB powered fairy lights (affiliate link).  You can read how I did this previously here.


Using the combing waste that is inevitably produced when I blend colours together, I created some layered, needle-felted flowers in a rainbow of colours.


Stitching the fairy lights on and then the flowers really helped to dictate where all of the other colours were placed later on.  I wanted a complex meandering of colour changes along the base, rather than a strict adherence to their colour order.


I went on to knit curlicues from the 18 different colours of handspun yarn.  You can find the instructions on how to knit these here.


I worked out a pattern for a 5-sided star and made dozens of them in various sizes.  To adhere to the theme of zero-waste, some of the stars were stuffed with yarn scraps, while most of them were filled with wool combing waste.


Some of the stars were knitted in variegated yarn and left plain, while others were knitted in the solid-coloured yarn and had a row of beads knitted in around the edge.  The variations in scale and colour all added to the complexity I was aiming for.  

As I could see my solid-coloured yarns beginning to run out, I joined them all together again using a Russian join so that I could ensure that none of the yarn was wasted.


Here’s how my wreath looked at the halfway point.  I find the best way to approach decorating a wreath that I want to be totally covered is to add all of the bigger pieces first, as it’s so much easier to then fill the gaps with the smaller embellishments.


I turned some of the knitted beads from my earlier blog post into colourful acorns by drilling a couple of holes to add a yarn string. I then glued the balls into the acorn caps with epoxy glue (affiliate link).


Finally, with my variegated yarn, I made some 2.5cm pom poms.  These were made 5-at-a-time using my Multipom - wrapping it around 50 times for extra fluffy, but tiny, wool pom poms. 

To make them fuller and fluffier, I finished them with my handheld steamer (affiliate link), which made the seam virtually disappear.


Once I’d attached everything, the shiny, wreath base was looking very hard and metallic next to an abundance of wool and soft colour so I used the last remaining length of variegated yarn to wrap around and cover the metal base.


It really brought the whole thing together, and I was happy that my “For the Love of Wool” Wreath was finally finished!



I’m so pleased with it! It’s totally bonkers and I love it!

Now, I just need to decide where to put it once the exhibition is over…

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Thursday, May 15, 2025

Knitted and Felted Beads


I’m currently working on a wool sculpture to exhibit alongside my crafting friends from my local Maker Space. The art pieces we make will hopefully be displayed as part of The Great Big Green Week. Everything we create will be made with a focus on zero-waste, environmentally friendly practices, and swapping and sharing skills to promote community and keep crafts alive for future generations.

For my exhibition piece, I decided to make a variation of my Joyful Wreath, but I’ll be adding some slightly different elements that I didn’t manage to fit on when I made it back in 2022.

I first experimented with knitted beads in 2012…


These beads were knitted with heavier yarn over just a few rounds and then felted with a hand-held food mixer. This time, I’ll be using a lighter, sock-weight yarn and just putting them in the washing machine to fuzz them up a little.


A Spectrum of Knitted Beads




All of my knitted beads are made from handspun yarn that has been made by blending just cyan, magenta, yellow, and black.  


The colours were mixed in varying proportions to create a full colour wheel, however each blend had the addition of 10% black to make the rainbow a little more moody.


The beads are relatively simple in construction and take about 15 minutes to make from start to finish.  They do use a couple of more advanced techniques, but once you get the hang of them, they’re pretty easy to make.

Knitted Beads Instructions 



I knitted my beads using sport weight, handspun yarn and size 2.75mm circular knitting needles.  I wanted my stitches to be quite dense, so I used a slightly smaller needle size than I normally would for this gauge of yarn. 


Circular Cast-On


Cast-on 14sts using a pinhole cast-on or disappearing cast-on. 

There are several different ways of working this circular cast-on, and a few tutorials on YouTube.  



The pinhole cast-on is a method of picking up several stitches from inside a loop of yarn, which can then be gathered together after you’ve worked a couple of rounds.


Divide the cast-on stitches in half and continue in magic loop.

Knit 9 rounds in stocking stitch.  

(As the beads are knitted in magic loop, I found it easier to keep track if I thought of it as 18 rows rather than 9 rounds, moving my counter on every time I turned my work.)


Finishing the Bead


Using a wool needle, thread the cast-on yarn tail through the cast-on stitches and pull tightly to close the base up securely.  Thread the yarn through to the inside of the bead and roll it up inside the base of the bead.


Cut the working yarn and thread it through each of the stitches as you pull them off the needle.


Stuff your bead with wool.  I’m using wool combing waste, but scraps of leftover wool yarn would also work.


Pull the yarn tightly to close the bead, and then thread the yarn through the cast-off stitches to secure them in place.  Insert the needle and yarn through the bead, bringing it out at the opposite end.


You could leave them like this or you could embroider them, sew beads on, or felt them to reduce the stitch definition.  Grouped together like this, they remind me of a bunch of tiny balloons!

Felting the Beads in the Washing Machine



As the beads were knitted using 100% non-superwash merino wool yarn and stuffed with wool combing waste, they will shrink and felt in the wash if they are mistreated enough.

As I want my wool sculpture to have variations in texture, I decided to throw one in the washing machine, along with my guinea pig bedding, to see how it fared.  Afterwards, the bead was rolled into shape while it was still wet to make it nice and round.  

You can see that the stitches of the one on the right are much less defined, and the bead is denser and fuzzier than the one on the left that hasn't been through the wash.  I really like this effect, and from a distance it looks much more like a needle-felted bead.  I went on to put the whole lot in a delicates laundry bag and put them through two washes (along with my guinea pig bedding) at 40 degrees C.

If you were to try this yourself, I would definitely recommend just shrinking one to start with to see if you like the effect.  The water needs to be above 40 degrees for it to felt the beads, and it helps to have something substantial in the washing machine at the same time to assist with the felting eg. towels, blankets, jeans.

Size Variations


The beads are so quick to knit up, it's very easy to experiment with different sizes of beads to see what works for you.  Experiment with thicker wool yarns and larger needles, and fewer stitches and rows to see what size works best for you.

The Possibilities


I haven’t quite decided how I will use my beads in the wool sculpture yet.  Whether I’ll just group them like berries, sew beads onto them, or attach them to the ends of wire to have them radiating out from the edges…


… as a touch of whimsy I have a few acorn caps that are small enough to turn my knitted beads into colourful acorns.  I have a couple of weeks to decide so maybe I might add a handful of colourful woollen acorns as a fun, joyful element!

Thank you so much for stopping by, and happy crafting!


If you've found any of this post interesting or useful, please pin this image to Pinterest.  It makes a big difference to me and helps other crafters find it too.

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Please be sweet and share the love. Leave a comment, subscribe to my YouTube channel, like my Facebook page for regular updates or follow me on Pinterest,  Bloglovin' or Instagram

        
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