Felted Rug

What does one do when one's long weekend vacation will be a total wash-out, rain all the time?
Start an over-ambitious, large needle- and wet-felting project, like this wool area rug!

I had some wool batts made years ago from some sheep not particularly known for their fleece (but it was inexpensive!  And it wet-felts exceptionally well).  I made pre-felt in autumnal colors and cut out leaf shapes, making a stencil from a scan of my colored pencil drawing of sassafras leaves:

This project will take me ALL summer!
Keep needlin'!

Starting a Rug

I am starting a small area rug, using some deep brown felted batting I had made a few years ago.  I recently drew (using colored pencils) a loose circle of sassafras leaves in their autumn colors.  I thought  this might make a beginning pattern for an area rug (or wall hanging) repeating the circle swirl outward to the edges of the rug.  Here is the drawing:

Next, I scanned the drawing just to get some cut-out patterns for the leaves I would use.  Then, I made some pre-felt in autumnal colors and began to cut out the leaves, pictured below. 

Here are some of the cut out, pre-felt leaves.  The next step is to needle-felt them into place on the background, then begin wet felting.  I need to do much more work on this, so stay tuned for updates!