Felted Brown Mushrooms and Lichen Covered Rocks

I am working on another small terrarium. The inspiration for this one comes from hiking in the dry open forests of the Gulf Islands. There is not a lot of rainfall in the summer and the forest floor is covered with moss and beautiful lichens. When the first real rain comes in the fall we go on mushrooming expeditions. My favourite wild mushrooms to eat are the Chanterelles, but the smooth rusty brown-capped Bolete mushrooms are always exciting to find. If you would like to try making these little brown mushrooms, check out my needlefelted mushroom tuturial!

My favourite mushrooming field guide is All That The Rain Promises and More... by David Arora. The book is small enough to fit into your jacket pocket, is filled with wonderful photos, and is really easy to use. The best thing is that while it is not a complete compendium of every mushroom species known to man, it has all the really tasty mushrooms you want to look for, and very carefully compares and contrasts these with any local mushroom "lookalikes" which are actually poisonous. The book is also filled with hilarious stories, interesting recipes and poems. It is very unique and I think it appeals to the quirky people who run about the woods on their hands and knees searching for elusive and delicious fungi.

I know that fall is long way away, but don't forget that those elusive Morels come up in the spring! 

**If you have never been mushrooming before, it is wise to go with a more experienced buddy, or join a local mycology society. I have been hunting mushrooms since I was a child but if I am ever less than 100% sure of my identification, I leave it behind.

Needle Felted Succulent Terrarium

Ever since I made my first felt terrarium I have searching my local thrift stores for the perfect glass containers so I can make some more. This week scroungers luck was with me and I now have 4 glass terrariums waiting to be turned into special little microcosms! It is snowing outside and I am thinking of summer, so I decided to make my terrarium out of felted versions of sun-loving succulents. I love the colours and shapes and I wish I had a patio where I could expand my collection - have you seen Geninne's? I am so jealous.

Succulents really lend themselves to being made from felt because their leaves have a natural "plush" look to them and the wool seems to take on their soft palette of greens and blues easily.

Because the beautiful colours of these plants was such a big part of my inspiration, I have to admit to being really fussy about colour with this project. I hand-dyed the sheets of wool felt, starting with either cream or white, to get different grades of blue-greens. To achieve the yellow-green of the tiny filler plants in the front of the terrarium I over-dyed very light blue-green felt with natural turmeric (handy tutorial from Lion Brand for dying wool with turmeric). For the jade plant, I layered wisps of wool roving in white, light green, bright magenta and soft lavender, in order to get the leaves just right.

I knew I would have to make some tall succulent plants in order to make my terrarium look full. I decided that I would start with a jade plant, as I had a real plant in my living room to study. After searching the internet, I think I may actually be the first person crazy enough to needle-felt a jade plant. Trust me to make an everlasting version of a plant that already is drought resistant and impossible to kill! It is made with a pipe cleaner armature. I needle-felted a smooth stalk and smaller side branch around the pipe cleaner in light green wool. The leaves were attached to the stalk, alternating directions with each pair. Oh, did I mention, I also stabbed myself about a hundred times? I need to figure out a better way to felt the edges of thin leaves that doesn't involve sandwiching my barbed needle between my fingers.

The "Hens and Chicks" type succulents were made almost the way you would make a rose. I started with a small cone of needle felted wool, and then built the plant around this, starting with the smallest leaves and adding larger and larger leaves. The outermost layers are not only double felt, but stuffed with wool roving. I also made a second tall succulent with many cone-shaped leaves, some tiny filler plants, as well as some large curling leaves that I used for the background. Everything was arranged and sewn down to a terracotta-coloured needle felted base.

I also discovered a new (probably only new to me) stitch for sewing together two layers of felt; I am going to call it "Shoelace" stitch, because that is how I sew it.
**Update: I have moved the description for the Shoelace stitch to its own mini-tutorial here.

Needle Felted Terrarium and Mushroom Tutorial

A while back, I saw a post on Craft about everlasting terrariums which I really loved. I wanted to do a similar project, but make my own mushrooms with needle felting. This project was extremely fun to do and also looked amazing when it was finished. There are so many ways to customize your terrarium; you could make different mushrooms, add real forest objects like dry leaves, rocks or tiny pine cones, or you could even add kitschy items like vintage ceramic animals or little gnomes.

I had never needle felted anything before, but the low cost for one barbed needle and a couple ounces of wool roving made me confident to just give it a try. I also lucked out and found the perfect glass "terrarium" at a second hand shop for 2$. Needle felting is pretty easy; you just loosely form shapes with your wool, rest them on a piece of thick foam (to protect yourself) and stab at it with the needle until it becomes firm and takes shape. I didn't have any instructions for my mushrooms, and sort of came up with a process as I went along.

To form a mushroom, felt a flattish pancake of wool, adding as you go to the top so that it forms a smooth dome, or whatever profile you want your cap to be. Turn it over and punch an inner circle to make an indent. The wool pulls together and firms up as you needle it, so that is how the indent forms. Roll a log of your stem-coloured wool and fold the bottom end over itself; this will make the stem end a little bulbous when you felt it. Leave the very top of your stem unfelted. Tease this out into a flat circle and center inside your cap. Stab the needle all around the stem into the cap, pushing the "gills" inside the indent. If you are making a polka-dot mushroom, roll tiny balls of wool and attach them to the cap by gently stabbing them with the needle. Be very careful not to stab yourself at that point, the needle is very sharp! I found that when I was finished, there were little stray fluffy hairs that needed to be snipped off with scissors in order to make the surface smooth.

If you follow the Craft tutorial for how to make your terrarium base, I should mention that I pushed wires into my mushroom stems (use a gentle jackhammer motion, twisting didn't work as well) and then just poked them into the moss base instead of using glue. Because nothing is glued down I can rearrange them as much as I like and if I ever want to make any changes I can.

If you live in Victoria, BC and are interested in learning more about needle felting, or if you are looking for a great place to get supplies, I recommend heading over to Knotty By Nature Fibre Arts, on Government St. in Victoria, BC. They were really helpful when I walked in with this project idea and I like supporting local businesses.

I also made some tiny fabric ferns for my terrarium. You can see a photo and short description of how they were made here. I have to be honest and tell you that the ferns were a huge pain in the ass to make. It was an incredibly fiddly job getting all of the leaves to stay on and align properly. If I was to make this again, I would cut the leaves out as attached pairs instead of individually in order to make it easier.