I set out today to take the ugliest material I could found in my apartment and make it fashionable. Lucky for me, I found a fabulous ball of Fun Fur in a red-orange-purple combo. I believe the Fun Fur was given to me as a joke by my cousin several years ago.
In case you're not sure what Fun Fur is:
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| It's ugly. |
I started to crochet the yarn but after about 20 stitches got frustrated with how difficult it was to keep track of my stitches amongst the fur. I pulled out my loom and started to apply the yarn as the warp. I played with a few different ribbons in the weaving but rejected them all. Everything looked absurd. I realized there were only two ways to go: cover up the shameful Fun Fur or go totally crazy with it. I decided to make two very easy pouches today experimenting with both.
Because the yarn is 100% polyester, I was certain it would melt if ironed enough. So I ironed away at the yarn on the loom, and backed it with fusible. I put a few stitches in the end to keep it together long enough to get it off the loom and I cut the piece in half; one for each pouch.
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| Semi-melted Fun Fur, backed with interfacing |
The subdued piece was going to be very simple. I wanted to cover the Fun Fur with chiffon or something that would be sheer but calm it down, but I found a great lace I purchased on a whim a few months ago. I'm not a huge fan of black lace over color because sometimes it comes off as tacky, but the nature of the project was tacky to I went for it anyway. Turns out the tacky canceled itself out. Fantastic.For my wild piece I knew I wanted the Fun Fur to be exposed but I wanted to make sure the half melted remains didn't come apart during construction. I fell back on an old technique of mine: rows of stitching 1/3" apart. I used a heavyweight navy blue thread (Although in retrospect I might have benefited from a lighter color that blended better) and the back and forth stitching gave the texture a vague chevron effect. I thought the resulting piece looked like an Impressionist interpretation of Fun Fur.
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| 1/3" Stitches |
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| Wild vs. Mild |
Both of the pouches still require zippers (must go to the trim store next week!), and the Wild version is meant to fold over. I added more Fun Fur to the flowers because they needed some vibrancy and to blend in a bit better.
While I do think both end pieces are interesting and I enjoyed making the fabric, I think Fun Fur may be more trouble than its worth. Because it's not worth much.
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| Fun Fur fabric covered in black polyester lace |
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| Navy wool felt foldover pouch with Fun Fur insert and crocheted cotton flowers |
xo,
Arielle
