Chad Alice Hagen’s Felt, Resist Dyeing and Bookmaking Class

Whee, this was better than Disney World. Seriously.

Chad Alice led us through finishing prefelted needle-punched merino wool batts, then we clamped fun metal and Lexan and wood stuff to folded pieces and dyed them, and took them off, and reclamped, and dyed them, and took them off, and reclamped, and dyed them. All in all we used nine colors in the dyepots and most pieces went into three dyepots before the sun went down on Friday.

^^^After the second set of dyebaths.

^^^Look at her beautiful pieces. She is showing us how they were folded and what “tools” were used for the designs.

^^^After the final darkest dyebaths.

^^^Probably my favorite piece. I didn’t put it in the third dyebath.

^^^This is my favorite large piece.

Then we picked a piece for a book cover, cut it down, embellished the flap with stitching and beads, then glued thrift shop leather to the inside cover. She taught us a simple longstitch binding but I still learned a new way of doing it. She taught us how to do two different closures but I didn’t get around to mine – I’m still deciding what I want to do about it.

This was my second favorite for the book cover, so I chose it. She said not to chose our favorites.

Here’s an example of taking a mistake and working with it. My first two middle stitches on the cover were too loose. I could have gone back and rebound and tightened them, but instead I decided to do a twisty thing to them. Longstitch is versatile like that. Chad Alice showed us an elegant way to finish off the final knot for the binding on the inside of the cover.