Finished Fish Pond Purse

Years ago I bought a felted purse and loved it to death. I had to make my own to replace the old one. I started by wet felting the turquoise purse shape with handles and the green locks on the bottom. I knew I was going to put some kind of flower on the two sides. As my purse was drying it had that wet sheep smell and my son thought is was pretty bad smelling. He also thought the green bits looked like the pond slim in our fish pond. 

Now that the purse was dry, I was ready to do the side decoration. The idea of the pond was still in my head. So I did a water lily and a fish.

I used water solvable interfacing, the clear kind, to do the needle felting on. I drew out my flower, fish and lily pad on paper and then traced on to the interfacing. This gave me a base to felt on to and the shapes I was planning to do.  

 Many of the days I worked on this was done with my Surface Design Group. One day to layout the purse base and do the wet felting, then another day to do the fish and a part day to finish up the lily pad and flower.
I needle felting the decoration to the purse all dry then I did a final wet felting at the end.

My fish

I have added this post to Crazy Mom Quilts,