Wild, Wild West

Billie, at Lucy's Sheep Camp, has issued another fiber challenge to anyone interested.  The theme is "Wild, Wild West."  Each contestant gets a bag with the same materials in it, which includes a piece of grey felt (8x8), hunks of red, blue, and yellow roving, two pieces of lace, a leather star, a gold horseshoe charm, a rusted gun shell casing, a plug nickle, and the words "Giddy-up" printed on a small piece of paper/fabric.  You can make anything you want to, but ALL the items must be used in some form or other. You can't leave anything out, but you can add other things.  So, I've been trying to get some inspiration...

I saw a great techinique for wet-felting, needle-felting, and machine stitching on a new blog I've started to follow: farmlass.blogspot.com.  I love what she did. Thanks, Kerry! You are so talented.

 So, I thought maybe I would give it a try with materials that I have, using the same basic colors in the challenge packet.  If it didn't work out, at least I wouldn't have ruined the project by experimenting!  Been down that road before....what could possibly go wrong?  Kind of like my attempts at cooking a new dish for company! 

Anyway, I should have taken a few more pictures, but...

I made two wet-felted pieces, which are sort of similar.  Here's one after it was wet-felted.

Then here's the other one after I machine stitched some "outlining" around the mountains and fence line.  And then I added some needle-felting to fill in where it needed some color, or where the lines of color were not quite right.  Finally, I added the cowgirl and her lasso which I needle felted separately, then attached to the background.  When  I do the "real thing," I may attach the finished piece to a larger square of felt, or perhaps to a barn-wood background.  I will need to ask my neighbor to help me build a framework for this out of my barn-wood planks, and I hope he can spare the time to do that. That's all rather "ify" at the moment.

Next, I need to consider where how I would incorporate star,  the gun shell, plug nickel, horseshoe, and printed words...so I've got a little more to think about!!  I might have to add a horse in the background.