Trying to Felt

I joined up for the Beading For A Cure challenge this year.

The bead kit every one has to use to make some thing has subtle shades of purple/amethyst and bronze gold colors, I'm not sure what color of bead I want to add to it yet... or if I will even. I have some ideas I think could turn out stunning if done right. One of those was to make a beaded mask. Full face rather than half mask.

I've always loved masks and used to have a very small collection of ceramic/glass types that hung on the wall. The problem here is how do I make a bead embroidered mask that can be hung on the wall as a display piece?! I found a full sized wearable mask, gold colored, that I have been trying to figure out how to use as either a form or to attach fabric to so that I can bead straight on to the form.


I've experimented off and on over the past few months trying to figure out a way to make a felt shape or cover. Gray store bought felt, soaked in hot water and molded over a wire mesh form that was modeled on the gold mask. I will have to cut out sections to form and stitch back together to make a smooth surface.


Not sure how the shaping is going to work out and after this morning am thinking I may just end up trying some type of glue to attach the felt to the gold mask and hopefully it will have enough give to it that I can take shallow stitches in to the felt.
Hunter green merino roving felted and molded over mask to air dry this morning


Here's the shape the green felt has so far with out the gold mask form under it


I'm still experimenting, but my idea here is a free form beaded mask that would be wearable or able to hang as a display piece on the wall.

The problems are:
I only just managed to produce a usable piece of hand felt this morning by carefully hand felting on the wire mesh in a shallow basin of hot soapy water.. don't know why I didn't think of it sooner but I've wasted my small stash of loose roving on trying to manage this... they've turned out lumpy and/or stringy, definitely felted though and sent the dogs crazy through the house trying to find the smelly wet sheep they were SURE was hidden some where.

Now that I've manage to figure out how to produce a not too bad piece of hand-felt, how do I manage to stiffen it to hold the mask shape while I bead on it? I was trying to get the felt to attach to the wire mesh as I felted it thinking that I could simply mold the resulting "felted mesh wire" to the mask form and it would work.

As you can see from the photos... it didn't attach to the wire mesh but HEY... I figured out the trick to using the mesh to create the felt!
So... now what?! I dunno ... Yet. Still thinking and experimenting so far... it's a good thing I have until August to complete this.