HINTS AND IDEAS.

Auckland Star, Volume LVIII, Issue 136, 11 June 1927, Page 24

HINTS AND IDEAS.

THE CRAZE FOR FELT. THE MATERIAL THAT IS USED FOR MATS AND HATS. The latest needlework craze seems to involve the use of felt in making everything and anything. From cushions, and tea cosies to pictures and personal adornment, felt must be the material skilfully devised if one would be very up-to-date. It is possible to carry out very successful designs in felt because its cleancut edge needs no binding, and patterns and snippets can be joined and superimposed in contrasting colours to form any outline. Small wooden beads aud paint are often used to help the effect.

Nowadays, of course, every article must necessarily be picturesquely camouflaged to suggest something entirely different.

A tea cosy, far from being a mere cosy, represents a quaint, rustic cottage made of felts of varied and appropriate colours, the brown roof artistically touched with green paint to look like mossy thatch, painted-in casements and door, and with even hollyhocks of bright felt patches growing up the biscuit-tinted sides. The curved squarely-squat shape of the cosy completes the illusion.

Felt egg-cosic9 in the shape of realistic cock and chicken heads, or Hompty Dumpties, add to the interest of the breakfast table. Plate mats and table runners, with blanket-stitching or fringed edges, are in the same medium. Cushions of black, brown or Egyptian blue felt have silhouetted designs copied from the Egyptian tombs and papyrus pictures. Otfifh present a startlingly vivid moonlight tableau, a seascape with brown-sailed ship, or Pierrot with a banjo. It is done in a sort of combination of patchwork and applique, picked out with paint or a few definite stitches. Actual framed pictures entirely built up In coloured felts .are a strange novelty, but a branch of art wjiich is interesting some ingenious women. Until one looks very closely into them it is difficult to realise that they are not really painted in bold, flat colours. Pretty "odds and ends" boxes for the dressing-table and boudoir, biscuitboxes, powder bowls, and so op, ane frequently covered with felt; while blotters, book-covers, cases, bags, and all the things one used to work in suede or raffia while those "crazes" lasted, are now exclusively of felt. ladies' waistcoats, bedroom slippers, i scarves and hat trimmings, besides the buttonhole flower-posies, are also seen in felt.