For a while now, I have been wrestling with a conundrum in the making of felt corsages. If I make a sheet of felt, and cut out the shapes I need for the corsages, this leaves me with unfinished edges which, depending on how dense the felt is, can sometimes be prone to fraying. If, on the other hand, I make each component as a separate piece of felt, the edges are wonderfully finished, but I have two new problems - firstly, it takes ages (it takes longer to make two small rounds for one corsage than it does to make a sheet of felt which can yield four corsages), and secondly, because the rate of shrinkage is rather unpredictable, it's hard to get the right size - especially when you are making, for example, a large and a small circle to make a double flower.
So what was my Eureka moment? It came, inevitably, in the shower! (OK, so Archimedes was in the bath, but this is 2011!) What I need to do is to make a sheet of felt, yes - but then dry it, cut out the shapes I want (a fraction bigger to allow for further shrinkage, but at this point that shouldn't be more than about 10%), and then wet it and full it again so that the edges seal! Simple really...but then so was the idea of displacement...
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