In Oct/Nov EPH (Ever Patient Husband) and I took a trip of a lifetime and spent a wonderful four weeks exploring mostly Cambodia. Initially, we were on a two-week tour with a group, before saying goodbye and then doing two weeks solo exploring.
Below is just a glimpse of what we encountered from a creative viewpoint, although I have slipped in a few extras, beginning with….
Transportation!
We started in Vietnam; a country we have been to before and as we had organised our own there-and-back travel we arrived a day earlier than the group – to allow for any travel glitches! We actually stayed for our first night in Saigon (Ho Chi Minh) in the same hotel we stayed in 23 years previously….it was exactly as we remembered, so much so we could have been there just a few months previously!
Parcels, packages and wares
Transferring to our next hotel, within the city, we met the group and after an overnight stay we then transferred to a river boat. Yes, we spent 7 nights in total luxury (I did say the holiday of a lifetime!) cruising the Mekong River from Vietnam into Cambodia, before discovering Cambodia overland with the group.
The Mekong is Ennnnorrrrmous!
Along the way we were participants in all the side excursions. Many involved local industry such as lacquer work, silk production, silk weaving and water hyacinth weaving etc, (water hyacinth is very abundant along the river!). It can be argued that these venues are purely for the tourists, and I agree to an extent….All I can say is that without these excursions I might not have been able to, easily, access the sites. What I did see was that we were a small part of helping these crafts to survive, providing much needed employment (often for disabled persons) within the communities, whilst also allowing the skills to be passed on….but this is not a discussion for this post!
Lacquer work in Saigon
Water hyacinth weaving in C’ai Bé
Bamboo
Another grown product that is extremely plentiful and is used ubiquitously
Everywhere nurtured our souls and provided inspiration for our creative spirits. From the contrast of the busy city to ‘gentle’ rural landscapes, from simply daily life to the busy crafting communities, to the amazing architecture both ancient and modern.
As I have too many photos for this post I’ll sign off until my next one. Just a taster – silk, rice, sweets etc will be included!
But as this post was entitled ‘Inspiration’, and most reading this will be working with textiles, I will leave you with a couple of thoughts on I how I see creative ideas everywhere in terms of shape, colour and design etc. These can be translated into – sewing, embroidery, landscape stitching, patchwork, felting, painting, and weaving to name but a few.
I hope you are able to use your surroundings for inspiration.
I am still learning how to use my new Oxford Punch needles and make punched fabric. This can be rugs, chair pads, coasters, art work. Whatever you fancy really. I continued working on the freeform piece that was started in the workshop I took last fall. I decided to add a border to the piece. Once that was done I took it off the frame.
Carlene using her punch needle
Back of the freeform piece
Front of the freeform piece
Since I am still a beginner I decided to experiment with some blank Monks Cloth. I stretched the cloth onto my frame and got out my Sharpie to draw a pattern. I decided to try making a small Christmas tree and some coasters. Then I picked out my yarn and started punching. I drafted the pattern and started the tree one evening, then finished it off in another evening.
Pattern drafting in progress
Pattern drafted
Punching the tree in progress (back)
Punching the tree finished (back)
Punching the tree finished (front)
Punching the tree in progress (front)
Then I turned my attention to the coasters. After a couple of hours of punching spread over 2 evenings I had completed my coasters. Generally you work by outlining your shapes, then filling in the middles. I was using a bulky yarn that changes colours slowly as you move through the ball. On the first coaster I let the background yarn move through a colour transition. But I decided that I preferred to have the background be more solid so I avoided that with the rest of the coasters.
Coaster #1 (back)
Coaster #1 (front)
Coasters in progress (back)
Coasters in progress (front)
Coasters complete (back)
Coasters complete (front)
I now had to learn how to finish my pieces. I watched some videos and asked for help on a punch needle forum. I learned that I needed to iron the pieces to block them. So I wet a large bathroom towel, covered the piece with the damp towel and ironed them. Both the front and the back of the pieces were ironed. This helped flatten my pieces. I cut out the pieces and used the iron to fold down the hems to make sewing them down easier.
After gathering my sewing supplies I started with the tree piece, sewing down the hems. Next I sewed the tree into a cone. Then I added a small star made from pipe cleaner and sewed small brass bells randomly onto the tree. When I was happy with all that, I stuffed the tree and then sewed a circle of black felt onto the bottom of the tree. Then I moved onto finishing the other pieces. The freeform piece was easy to sew since there were nice wide seam allowances. The coasters were harder because the seam allowance was too small. However, I fudged it and got them sewed down.
Ready to hem the tree
Hemming the tree
Hemming the tree complete
Tree sewed into a cone
Tree decorated with bells and star
Ready to start hemming
Hemming the freeform piece
Hemming the coasters
Hemming complete
The final step was to sign my pieces. Black sharpie for the win! (Though I could not sign the tree since it had a black felt bottom.)
Freeform piece with signature
Coasters with signature
The tree was gifted to my parents and was a small addition to their holiday decor.
Tree on display
Nativity scene
I had a great time working on these pieces and learned quite a few valuable lessons:
1) Design: The tree should not have had a curved line on the bottom (my tree leans). Since this was a 3D piece I should have made a paper cutout to test my design.
2) Spacing: A larger seam allowance would have been better for the coasters. They suggest 2″ on all sides.
3) Density: I should have made fewer punches in some of the pieces. My punching was very dense which caused the pieces to curve when taken off the frame. Luckily blocking with the iron helped with that. In future I should skip more space between punches and leave a bit more space between rows of punches. I think this is an easy beginner mistake to make because you are working from the back and the tendency is to fill everything in. However, in reality you need to give the yarn some breathing room to let it bloom.
Thanks for listening to me babble about punch needling. I’m enjoying learning this new craft and looking forward to my next project.
Here we are at the start of a new and exciting adventure: making a felt box out of, yes, wool!
You think that I am stating the obvious, felt is oftentimes made of wool and of course you can make felt boxes: just look at the internet and you will see tons of them for sale (mostly made with industrial felt)! But you would not believe how many times I have had to explain those two bits of information to people during the time that I was making my box: yes, I am felting it. Yes, it is made of wool. No, I am not going to sew it (if I possibly can), I am felting it. Yes, I make it by felting wool. W-O-O-L. How, you ask? You can make all sorts of shapes by felting with the right resist..no, I am not going to sew it, I assure you it will come out with the box shape. Well, hopefully.
To be sure, a box is just another type of wet felt vessel made with a resist, and yes, of course you can make it by sewing the single felted flat sides and a flat bottom together, but…sewing, where is the fun in that? (total respect to people who like sewing, eh, it is just not me)
Long story medium-short, we decided that we needed to organise our living room in a better way, changing bits of furniture and generally trying to sort out the chaos, also because we are in the process of adopting guinea pigs (oh, my! let’s see) and we need the space for an indoor cage. So, we are plus bookshelves and minus an office desk with drawers, and we need some kind of storage box that fits the shelves and, crucial, does not seem something that you find in your shed. Unfortunately, the size of our shelves is not standard, and a standard storage box will not fit, either because too small or too big. So I thought, let’s have a box that is good to look at and the maximum size that will fit in there, let’s make it ourselves!
(well, I would not want you to think that I normally talk to myself with that royal We. It is clear to any who know me that all that was just me and me thinking “What, 30 pounds for that soulless box that does not even fit properly? no way, I can make one better than that and spend less!” or something of the sort)
The size of the bookshelves that we have comes in two flavours, big and small, both somewhat non standard, so I originally thought about making a smaller box as well, and took measurements for both. All measurements are in centimeters.I arbitrarily added a 40 % increase on all sides, and did the same also for the height of the lid (all other measurements being the same for lid and box, of course)
To start, I prepared my resist for the bottom of the box: this involved a bit of sewing, namely attaching together the various bits of bubble wrap in the shape of a very floppy box without a top, as I will make a lid to fit it (some time in the far future). It does not show well in photo, but here it is:
Here is the resist seen with the bottom part prominent (naughty).And here is the resist bottom down: very floppy, you can not really tell that this is a box shape.
I hate hand sewing on bubble wrap, the plastic just clings firmly to your needle and it is worse than sewing sewing, in my opinion, so let’s not dwell on it.
I did not have as much wool as I needed, so I ordered some from World of Wool. I wanted to try out something different from my usual Merino, as I needed something coarser that could be hard wearing and stand a bit stiffer, because the box is not small and will be full of quite a few things that are on the heavier side, such as tape and packing tape, some cables, and so on. Unfortunately, I am not used to coarser wool, the room was in a chaos and I did not have time for much research on our brilliant Blog or Forum (yes, it is lame. Let’s say, it is not the best excuse for not doing my homework that I have ever found, I’ll admit, but if you give me a bit more time I can say that the guinea pigs have eaten my research), anyway, ahem, later on our wise felt experts from the FFS Forum have determined that apparently I picked the wrong wool.
Well, you know, it can happen to anyone if they skip research and sampling. Well, yes, I also skipped making samples, because, let me think, the guinea pigs ate my sample? OK, maybe not. I’ll get better, pinky promise.
Anyway, I got my generic “English wool” from World of Wool, and yes, it was a bit coarser than Merino but still quite soft..in hindsight I may have been suspicious when it felt so soft, I do not know. Actually, that is a mix of different breeds’ wool, some that may actually be quite good for stiffer felt and some that are not, although they are coarser than Merino. Perfectly fine felting with it for all sorts of uses, but , a word to the wise, do not use it to make big boxes, eh.
Here it is, the challenging wool.
So, I got on my white horse and started felting on my resist straight away with a lot of good will. I assumed that the coarser wool would need less layers to obtain the same felt (do not ask, pre-christmas chaos guinea pigs mind fugue hobblegobble chicachicacha) and I decided on 4 good layers.
Here are a few photos of my felting the first box:
Starting from the bottom, that was the biggest area.First layer on a short side. I took care to cover each already worked on part with a layer of plastic (I used plastic bin bags) as I learned from Lena Archibold’s advice on how to work with a book resist.Figuring out how to fold the different sides to get an even result was a bit puzzling at first, I spent some time opening and closing folds, it must have looked weird from outside!Yes, we are at the fun part of the 5th layer, when I could use dyed Merino wool for the wow effect!Here is another side. I actually decorated both four sides, but forgot to take photos of the two smaller. Anyway, it is the same colours for all the sides, only different layout.This is one of the small sides, all wet and soaped, being worked on.And here we are at the rolling stage. I also used throwing and variously manipulating the shape.
Wait, let’s see if you were attentive: have you noticed that I said “first box”?
Exactly: here is how it stood after drying, that is to say not at all:
No words, really.
It took more or less a day to felt, and a few days to dry. I liked the colours (a last layer of Merino wool, the 5th, to do that), and the shape ended up exactly the right size, but it would not stand, and I thought that it was because the layers were just not enough. I had enough wool to start a new one doubling the layers, so I went back to it using the same resist and the same type of wool (not my cleverest day, fine).
I weighted the remaining wool and I found out that I only had used about 150 grams of it, so I had still about 450 grams to try again.
The steps were the same, only more layers, so I will not show more pics of it, only the final result when the box had dried:
One side....the other side. I did not decorate the small sides this time, but left them natural white, as they are not going to be seen when the box is in the bookshelf.
It was better, but still the sides were not holding up.
At that point, it was definitely time for my felting fairy godmothers to intervene: I asked the classic “Help, what did I do wrong?” on the Felting and Fiber Studio Forum and, thank goodness, got kind replies that explained the generic English wool issue as probable cause (so, no, adding more layers was likely not going to cure that, in case I still had not clicked on to that) and gave me very good advice on what I could try next to avoid throwing the 2 boxes into the scrap pile and to salvage them.
The suggestions were:
– to try and stiffen the sides or corners with machine or hand stitching
– to try and put a wire armature inside the felt or stitch it on the inside of the box
– to use PVA glue to stiffen the felt
– to stitch the two boxes together one inside the other, and maybe also
– to add some stiff padding, sandwiching it in between the two boxes.
Or possibly to try a combination of the above suggestions until the aim was reached. Which is exactly what I did, apart from the PVA glue and the stitching, both left as last resort, the glue because I was not fancying working with glue with such a big object, and the stitching because I do not have a sewing machine and it takes ages to stitch by hand.
What worked? well, clearly not one thing only, I had to go on trying to the last, but in the end I have a workable box and we are already using it, even though there is no lid yet.
First, I added thick wire to the inside of the box corners, with a few stitches. The felt was not thick enough to insert the wire into it, that would have been better. Sadly, it did not solve the issue totally.
Then, I stitched in place the first box (the thinner one) into the second box, leaving the upper edges open for putting in some padding if required. It was better still, but not there yet.
Lastly, I started looking for padding. Floor underlayer was suggested as good for that job, but when I went to look at my local DIY builders warehouse I did not find the exact type and thickness that I needed, and I came home empty handed. The same research online left me with too many choices, some of them a bit on the expensive side because with a required minimum purchase limit that was also way too high for my storage capability (What, 20 meters rolls minimum?? I do not live in Versailles palace!)
Luckily, as I told you, we were changing some pieces of furniture and it so happens that some had polystyrene sheets in their packaging: initially, I did not want to use that for a few reasons (it breaks easily, it is not going to be washable, it can disperse plastic bits in the environment in time..), but in the end it was there and I could use it instead of chucking it in the garbage bin, so it is kept out of the dump for a little while more. And it was free for me, and readily available.
So, I cut it to size with a knife (bits of polystyrene everywhere, not my idea of fun but the kids where jumping up and down like it was going to be disco party in a minute) and inserted it in the pockets in between the two boxes, and then a quick blanket stitching all around the upper edges did the job. In time I may unstitch it and change the padding, if I will feel so inclined and will have the time.
And here it is, my box done!
(the bottom part, at least)
That is one side....and that is the other. Already full of stuff.
Now, for the lid, we will see. Who knows, it might be ready in time for my next blog post..only, don’t hold your breath for it, guinea pigs may be coming and all of that (how did I manage with my lazy excuses before them is a wonder, my friends!)
I hope that you liked my adventures, feel free to leave me a comment, as long as you do not ask me about hand stitching the whole box or preparing resists by hand stitching bubble wrap together, any other thing is totally fine.
I have been seeing some abstract watercolor landscape paintings on Instagram and thought I would like to try them. I don’t have a link for you as I seem to have kept scrolling without following or saving the video. If you look up painting watercolor landscapes with a palette knife on either YouTube or Instagram, you should be able to see some videos.
I already had some pieces of watercolor paper cut into small pieces, the largest being 4″ x 6″. These already had a light painting of blue to purple high flow acrylics on them but I decided that would work as the sky for the landscape. Some of the videos suggest that you use 3-4 colors of watercolor paint but I decided to keep it simple and only use two colors at a time.
I started with dry paper and the first two colors were Payne’s Gray and Burnt Sienna. I used a small blob of Payne’s Gray straight from the tube onto the edge of a palette knife. I scraped the palette knife across the dry paper for the horizon line. Remember the rule of thirds and avoid putting the horizon right in the center of the paper. I always think of it as having more sky or less sky in the picture. The paint can be kind of messy as you apply it and doesn’t need to be a solid line. I then applied the Burnt Sienna in the same manner but limited it to 3-5 small areas.
Then I applied water on a large flat brush above the horizon line. If I got much paint on the brush, I rinsed it between strokes. The paint from the horizon line moves up into the water and spreads by itself. Limit your brush strokes so you don’t overwork it. I pulled the paint up with vertical strokes above the horizon and used quite a lot of water. On some of the paintings, I sprayed water on too. I also took some of the leftover paint on the palette knife (very minimal paint) to make a few tree trunks above the horizon line.
Below the horizon line, I used less water on the brush and barely touched the paint moving it more horizontally. Some of the paintings, I moved the paint a bit by dabbing the end of the brush into paint (already on the painting) and applying it into the wet areas.
The first four paintings were all done with Payne’s Gray and Burnt Sienna. Try to vary the height of the trees and allow some of the trunks to lean one way or the other. The other thing that I tend to do is space my trees evenly across the landscape. That tends to look very artificial so make your spacing uneven. You can see that I experimented with the amount of paint used and the amount of working back into the wet areas.
Next up was to try two new colors. I chose colors from opposite sides of the color wheel so that there was contrast and when they mixed, it would give a neutralized (brown, gray) color. The painting on the right had a few black trunks added after the painting was dry with a black felt tip pen. I used Ultramarine Blue and Quinacridone Gold Deep in these two paintings. I love how the watercolor painting spreads on the wet paper and how you can add a bit more paint over the “distant” trees to give atmosperhic perspective.
Another change of colors to Phthalo Blue (Green Shade) and Quinacridone Gold Deep. This produced a much more pine forest type of feel.
These were really quick and easy to paint and I love the results. If I tried to paint trees in detail, I would never get this result. Now that I have tried these on paper, I have been sampling ways to get this result on silk and nuno felt. I am trying different methods and have a bunch of samples to show you in my next post.
I wanted a new cushion for my dining chair. I could have stitched one but when Annie showed me a couple of her sample felt patchwork pieces recently …
… I decided to adapt her idea to make a cushion cover.
My first job was to spend hours sifting through a couple of cubic metres of open-weave fabric. I made a choice of fabrics … then the next day I changed my mind so I went through the whole lot again to get the selection shown below.
I made a base of white merino wool fibres then started to randomly place pieces of fabric on it. I covered about a third of the wool and decided I wasn’t happy with the look so I carefully removed the patches of fabric and I went back to the drawing board for a rethink.
After a bit of pencil chewing I decided on a pattern. I marked out 25 squares on a large piece of paper then made freehand wavy lines to make the shapes for the patchwork pieces.
As no two shapes were exactly the same, I numbered them before cutting them out to use as pattern pieces for the fabric, so that they could be correctly placed on the wool fibres.
Unfortunately, because the fabrics were all loose weave, pinning was very difficult and cutting out the shapes was like trying to cut water – the fabric went every which way it wanted to.
I became engrossed in the difficult process of placing the pieces of fabric on the wool fibres and forgot to take a photo of that! I only remembered when I’d already started on the rolling…
… and here it is after fulling, rinsing and drying.
As the wool shrinks and the fibres wriggle up through the open-weave of the fabrics, a wonderful distorted and crinkly look appears – how much distortion does depend on the type of fabric.
This angled photo shows the crinkly effect quite well.
I made an ‘envelope’ style cushion backing from my ‘regular fabric’ stash in a complementary colour.
And here it is giving comfort from the hard,wooden back of the dining chair.
Annie
The hydrangea is one of my favourite blooms, as much for it’s tactile nature as it’s blousy large beautiful heads. If you’ve never shut your eyes and gently petted a giant hydrangea bloom stop reading and mark your calendar for the month they are in show in your part of the world, and definitely do it!
I’ve been meaning to create a picture in paint or fibres featuring hydrangeas for a long time, so I’m going to have a go, fingers crossed.
I would like it to be fairly abstract, definitely not too real, or too twee, but I really don’t know what I’ll get until I start working. I find it hard to work to a fixed creative outcome, I prefer to see what happens!
I’ve only got as far as sifting out some fabrics and yarns – and honestly this is a lengthy part of the process because I have accumulated far too much stuff over the years!
I remembered I made one small hydrangea sample a while ago that I’ve dug out for inspiration.
I’ve also just been laying out another sample to try out various fabrics and ideas but haven’t got very far yet.
Unfortunately all of the real hydrangea heads are brown (or have been pruned off!) at the moment so I’ve only got photos and imagination to work from, so no still life opportunities around this time of year. I suspect I won’t be too true to colour as I rarely am, but as long as they are roughly identifiable that’s good enough for me!
I’m just getting going so have not achieved much in time for our blog post unfortunately, so it’s a good job mum made her beautiful cushion so there is something finished to see.
Annoyingly life admin has been getting in the way of crafting time recently but I’m chomping at the bit and trying to squeeze in what I can, and hoping for a few quieter weeks now so I can get more done. Did I just say that out loud? Uh oh!
Since my last blog in November I’ve been very busy, though not necessarily making felt. I did, however, have a week’s exhibition with two friends in a local gallery the second week in December, and this afternoon I’ve dropped off 12 pictures for an open-call print exhibition, so that’s what I’m going to talk about today.
Sitting in the gallery, I had time to do a little needle felting – I generally prefer wet felting but needle felting is better suited to gallery-sitting. My friend Lynzi (yep, same name but different spelling) asked if I’d make two small brooches for her to give to her mother for Christmas. Lynzi liked some earrings I’d made previously …..
….. so asked me to make a mussel shell and a starfish brooch. I’d not needle felted a brooch before but didn’t think it would be very different from an earring so I set about it.
The trickiest thing was that she wanted them very small: she suggested between 2 & 4 cm. The smallest mussel shell earrings I’ve ever made were about 5.5cm and the star fish – which was a one-off – was considerably larger. I didn’t think 2cm was practical, not least of all because of the size of the pin needed to attach the brooches, so we agreed on approximately 4cm. The mussel shell was relatively straightforward. For earrings I make them curved like shells. For a brooch, I just made the back solid rather than curved and was sure to felt it very firmly so I could sew the fastening pin securely onto it.
I had to adapt the starfish design as the centre of the starfish – which had to conceal the brooch pin – had to be a larger part of the overall design than it was for the earring. I started off using a small star-shaped cookie-cutter to help me get an even star shape. I concentrated on working the length of the arms and the centre of the starfish, so that when I stopped using the cookie-cutter I could work into the sides of the arms to make it less like a star and more like a starfish.
Here are the end results.
Mussel shell and starfish broochesBrooches with a coin for scale
Lynzi was delighted and I’m looking forward to hearing what her Mum thought.
Now here we are in 2026 and I’ve had to put in quite a lot of studio time this week to create work for a print exhibition. Another local gallery (The Horsebridge Community Arts Centre in Whitstable) had an open-call for a print exhibition. The only requirement was that pieces had to have some element of hand printing. I wondered if my felt pictures with a printed tree would meet the criteria so had a chat with the organiser. She said ‘yes’ so I decided to enter some. The deal is that you pay per piece for a framed, wall hung item and you can put up to 5 unframed items per wall piece into a browser. The gallery takes 10% commission on sales of the framed pieces (which you’ve also paid to submit) and 35% commission on the unframed, browser pieces (which you haven’t paid to submit). I opted for 2 framed and 10 for the browser.
These were the framed pictures I already had
And two unframed pictures presented with a card back and mount.
So, I just needed to make 8 more unframed pictures this week to fill my quota for the wall and browser. That didn’t seem too unreasonable when I decided to do it, but it has felt a bit less sensible given the time I’ve had available. It’s also quite cold here (for England). My studio is in an old industrial building (it used to be a bottle capping factory for Shepherd Neame, the oldest brewery in the UK). It has very little heating, so I had to decamp to my house part way through the week when my hands just could not cope with any more freezing water.
The unframed pictures have a mount with an aperture of 20 x 20 cm (about 8 x 8 inches) so the felt is about 24 cm square. I thought the best idea was to make 4 pictures in one sheet and cut them apart during the fulling process. By ‘best’ I mean most efficient while still being a size I could handle on my felting table. I drew myself a little sketch to help me decide where to put the silk
Option 1 would mean the nuno felted area was the same in all 4 pictures so it was an easy decision to go for option 2.
I spent quite a long time sifting through my embarrassingly large collection of second hand silk scarves to select the pieces I wanted to use.
I was keen on a grey leopard print scarf with a white background but it had stripes of more and less dense silk running across it. I thought I should just check that the dense section would felt OK so I did a very scrappy little sample. If you’re wondering why I got so little shrinkage, the felted scrap started off considerably bigger than the non-felted one.
It’s not easy to see here – more visible on the finished picture – but the more dense stripes produced a little more ruching.
It all seemed to felt fine so above you can see the first batch part way through the fulling stage.
Below is the layout for the second batch of pictures
I put a stripe of second hand wool (usually tapestry wool) along the top of the silk section. For the brightly coloured marbled scarf I auditioned a few different colours (red, yellow, dark brown, green)
And went with the green
So, here is the first group of 4 pictures with their printed trees
And here’s the second group of 4
I took the photos very hastily today and not in very good light: they are not as grey as some of the images suggest.
I’ve presented them with a back board and white mount and dropped them off at the gallery this afternoon. The deadline for submissions is tomorrow so, that’s pretty good for me. I have marked ‘last minute’ tendencies.
I print the images with a heat press – the kind of thing you might use for printing and image on a t-shirt. As I was heating it up anyway, I pulled together some pieces of felt that were test pieces or offcuts, cut them into small pieces and printed on those too. I will make these into cards.
Well, that’s me for now. Wishing everyone a joyful, healthy and creative 2026.
Welcome to 2026, I hope it will be a better year than 2025 was.
So far this year, I have been busy with the local guild (grant reports data from the library), and considering projects for the new year (including cottage) and shopping options. I will also have to put in an order for more needles soon.
At this time of year, Guild activities, including programs and workshops, can be thwarted by weather or the fear of weather. With presenters thin on the ground for January, the program team had a creative solution for a last-minute program topic. We would interview ourselves and find out a bit more about each other. They had 3 questions to answer.
What was the first fibre pursuit you learned, and who taught you? (Feel free to ignore sewing.)
What was the first full piece you wove, felted, or used your own handspun for? (Bonus points: bring it to show off if you still have it.) Or feel free to tell us about the first-ever piece you made using your very first fibre art.
What is the (or a) most useful fibre-arts related tip that you learned directly from another practitioner?
The weather on Monday had been lightly snowing when I left home, pretty decorative light snow… it kept snowing…… all day. I was alone working on the library until another guild member dropped in to consult the library around 11, but left by 12:30. I was starting to fear that I might be the only one attending the meeting. Much later than usual, we had others brave the snow. There were so few of us that we had the meeting in the studio, rather than the Unitarians’ room. I am sure we were doing quality over quantity! (Those who stayed home were smarter, since it was a slippery, slow, snow-filled drive home.)
It was an interesting meeting. If you are in a guild and need an emergency fill-in for a meeting, with a few tweaks to the questions, this may be helpful for your group, too. I will show you what my answers were.
1) 07-12-2025 Jan Demo, Glengarry Museum
Answers to January program questions (Jan Scott).
What was the first fibre pursuit you learned, and who taught you? (Feel free to ignore sewing.)
– We will not discuss my attempts trying to learn to knit. Mom was patent but it did not go well. My talents then were more in the acquisition of frogs, turtles and snakes, none of which she let me keep.
– ~1982, I started to seriously pursue my interest in fibre/textiles with the SCA (Society for Creative Anachronism). My goal was to weave, then sew (post-weaving) by hand, my own Icelandic Viking clothing.
– ~1989 I joined the guild, became the librarian and then took my first weaving lessons with Donna Gerrarden in Cumberland (in 1989 or 1990). She had the guild’s old 100-inch loom and the guild table looms in her massive basement.
– One of my strongest memories about learning to weave was not just the magic as cloth formed from mere threads at the fell line, but the sound the heddles made as they jingled at every bump driving back and forth to Cumberland.
What was the first full piece you wove, felted, or used your own handspun for? (Bonus points: bring it to show off if you still have it.) Or feel free to tell us about the first-ever piece you made using your very first fibre art.
Weaving:
– Donna taught me the 4-day beginner weaving workshop, then immediately continued with the 2-day Intermediate Weaving workshop. She then set me off to weave on my own. My first piece was not well met by some of the older weavers in the guild. I was still allergic to wool, so I had woven in cotton. I wanted a drapy hand to the fabric, not a stiff coverlet. I was attracted to pattern but was not sure I wanted the full intensity of that pattern. So I wove, I think it was called Ancient Rose, an overshot pattern, with a light and dark blue cotton, the pattern weft being slub. I set it at 12 EPI, not 24. I was fascinated by the pattern emerging and disappearing as the slub appeared and disappeared. It was exactly the drapy, shawl-like cloth I wanted. (It did not look like a stiff colonial coverlet that overshot is usually used to weave).
2.1) The sample piece was used as a basket cover for demos, one of my felt hats to the Left of the basket
Spinning:
– My first spinning was at an SCA event (war in Pennsylvania). I was still allergic to wool, so I was handed a drop spindle and a handful of cotton. I was not told this might be harder to spin, just “here, spin this”. I had to put a “bit more twist” than the students with wool. I spun it just fine; it was fun, but cotton was not a fibre I wanted to use to make that Viking outfit. When I eventually lost most of my wool reaction, I discovered that “a bit more twist” is very hard to stop doing!
Felting:
– I did my first felting with Maggie Glossip in the early part of the 90’s. It was a small vessel project using a resist in wet felting, then needle felting embellishments on it. I was not as fond of the wetness of wet felting, but the concept was intriguing. I did enjoy the dry felting, but it took a while until I got to try it again.
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2.2–2.4) wet felted Vessel with Needle felted decorations
Others Fiber Arts:
– I have also tried my hand at dyeing, basketry, fibre prep, tapestry, kumihimo, and historical sewing.
What is the (or a) most useful fibre-arts related tip that you learned directly from another practitioner?
Weaving:
– Jack Lane –was a fabulous weaver of tartan coverlets in 3 matching panels. He taught me how to lash on to the front beam rather than tie. And the secret of lay in 3 picks, then beat to start off. Jack was very generous with his knowledge and time to all guild members.
3.1) Jack Lain teaching how to weave a reversing border for a folded hem.
3.2) Jack showing one of his Overshot coverlets (he also did tartan coverlets, three panels wide)
Spinning:
– The most memorable suggestion for spinning came from a twist workshop on art yarn with Esther Rodgers. At one point, we were making beehives in our yarn, and she went around the class enthusiastically declaring, “Shove it up the Orifice!!!” You just don’t hear that every day.
3.3) 08-23-2014 Twist Saturday Art Yarn with Esther Rodgers
3.4) art yarn with Esther close up
Felting:
– Sara Razzulie – online purveyor of info on (mostly sculptural) needle felting and on-line felt-along-s. “Try it”. At the start of the pandemic, I was perfectly happy to stay at home and putter in the garden, watch YouTube and listen to audiobooks. But I also enjoyed the online camaraderie of every live felt-along, including the mermaid Sara made. She did it over quite a few weeks and included wet felting for the tail’s top layer. I like the concept, but wanted a mer-man, so I scaled up her measurements from her mer-woman. Then scaled them down to make Mer-kids. I had to make my own guesses for the mer-pets, “Try it”. I made samples of wire gauges and types to better understand my options. I am still working on my Mer-project, but some parts of the family and pets are done and they had lots of fun playing at the Almonte textile museum during the guild exhibit.
3.5) Sarafina Fiber Art, Mermaid Felt Along 1: Armature, May 9, 2020, keeping us sane during the pandemic.
3.6) The mermaid she made during the felt along.
– Ann McElroy – water can be used carefully so wet felting isn’t as horrible and can be fun, if your vary carful. (though I do feel safer when supervised by Ann)
3.7) Ann McElroy teaching wet felting
3.8- 3.9) careful use of water in wet felting
It was interesting to hear the answers from others. Here are a couple of shots from the meeting. I think there were 15 people who made it through the snow (a couple took over an hour to get in, much, much longer than usual). During the program, we took turns between the Zoom participants and those in the studio. I had Rachel of the Program Team read my answers since I had already written and printed them out.
4.1) OVWSG January Meeting, the Zoom attendees outnumbered the in-person people
4.2-4.3) participating in the studio and online
If you don’t have a local fibre arts guild near you, maybe you can start a group, a get-together at the local library, fibre store, or felt in? It is really nice to have others who get equally excited about fibre and felting!
Now I have to get back to work, I have a workshop on needle felted landscape on Saturday (my calendar was sure it was originally on the following Saturday). Have Fun and Keep Felting!!
Happy New Year, everyone. I hope you are having a great holiday time. May the new year treat you well and help you get where you want to be.
Last year was a bit of a crazy, busy year. One thing I did that I have been wanting to do for a long time is to make an online workshop. I had to make a firm commitment that I would do it by a certain date, or I would never have managed to get to it. It was a huge amount of work, but so worthwhile. It’s funny, I was sort of dreading doing it, even though it was something I wanted to do. This year, I am planning to expand the existing workshop and possibly create another one. I am thinking of a ruffle scarf workshop, but we will see. I don’t know if it’s something people would like to learn.
I am taking a how-to photograph you fibre art workshop in the spring, so maybe my pictures will be even better
The second thing I want to do this year is take more pictures of scenery, plants, and things. I want to have a better library of pictures to work from. I am sure I will never get to Jan’s level, but I can work on it. This is some frosted milkweed in my garden
The third is to take some workshops. I am signed up for the Photographing Fibre Art that I told you about above, Spindle Spinning with a Medieval Distaff and Build your own LEGO Spindle. They are all taught by the Ottawa Valley Weaves and spinnes guild. I would have liked to take Rock wrapping, but everything I signed up for is clustered together, and rock wrapping is in the same time frame, plus I am teaching twice during that time. It never fails. Oh well, hopefully it will be offered again, and I can take it then. If you’re in the Ottawa, Ontario, Canada area, here’s a link to the workshops the guild is offering this winter/spring. https://www.ovwsg.com/workshops/
Lastly, I want to learn to crochet. I understand the concept. I’ve made a chain before. I am told I should make some dishcloths to start, but that doesn’t appeal to me. What other beginner/learner project do you know about? How did you start?
One of the UK’s major textile events, the Knitting and Stitching Show, is held annually in November in the Harrogate Convention Centre. It’s packed with “must have” products and showcases inspiring work by a wide variety of textile artists. Within the show there is a dedicated exhibition area called the Graduate Showcase, which highlights outstanding textile art from recent UK BA undergraduate courses. This initiative, run in partnership with the Embroiderers’ Guild, provides a platform for emerging talent in the textile art world and it was here last November that I first saw the work of Charlotte Farrant.
Charlotte hadn’t originally planned a career in textile design, in fact growing up she had formed a fascination for mechanics and saw herself becoming a mechanical engineer. At some point Charlotte discovered she also had a love of embroidery and enrolled in the Royal School of Needlework, graduating with a first class degree.
Charlottes “Codification of Stitch” is an innovative coded embroidery system developed by the textile artist herself and it is used to form hidden messages within the garments she designs, transforming textiles into wearable narratives. Specific embroidery stitches represent letters, forming hidden messages amongst the exquisite, decorative Goldwork, Blackwork, Whitework and Raised Work.
It was her fabulous “coded” Ann Lister black coat that first caught my attention on her stand at the show. In 2025, in collaboration with the Anne Lister project, Charlotte designed a range of costumes re-imagining the BBC cast of Gentleman Jack and bringing them in to the 21st century.
I hadn’t heard of Ann Lister but I’m guessing plenty of you will have, especially if you’ve seen her life story as portrayed by Suranne Jones in the BBCs series Gentleman Jack. This woman was an ardent diarist and from 1896 to 1840 she wrote a five million word diary, approximately one sixth of which was written in code. She combined the Greek alphabet, zodiac, punctuation, and mathematical symbols allowing her to document, but also conceal, the most private aspects of her life. It’s fitting that this beautiful coat should also conceal its message which is a quote from Ann in August 1823. It reads “I am not made like any other I have seen, I dare believe myself to be different from any other who exist.”
Ann Lister Coat
Sampler for coat
Another “Ann Lister” inspired piece on Charlottes stand was a waistcoat inspired by the diarists love of nature and the coded message on this garment reads “We are not alive if we’re not taking the odd risk now and again.”
Ann Lister WaistcoatDetail of waistcoat
There was also a selection of beautiful intricately stitched, coded brooches on display, each with a printed label providing its deciphered message.
Check out Charlottes website charlottefarrantembroidery.com where you can see her portfolio of designs as well as her shop selling Coded embroidery kits, brooches and many other embroidered coded art works.
Throughout history textiles have been used not only for protection and comfort but also to communicate our personal values and identity. Long before the written word came in to use Ancient civilisations would use specific colours and symbols to convey their environment, spiritual believes and culture. In this way meaning could be woven, felted or stitched into rugs, blankets, clothing, etc. delivering visual messages that could be easily read by the people around them. Examples include the felted rugs created by ancient nomadic tribes which would embody powerful symbols across different cultures signifying the wish for good health, long life, prosperity, etc.
Examples of just a few of the Symbols used in Middle Eastern rug making.
On the other hand, hidden “coded” messages in textiles have been used for a very different, but very important role in history. While imprisoned Mary Queen of Scots embedded complex and personal symbols within her embroideries to express her frustrations, assert her claim to the English throne, and comment on her unjust captivity. This panel depicts a grapevine and a hand holding a pruning knife. It references Mary’s claim to the throne, suggesting the need to cut away the fruitless branch of the Tudor tree represented by the childless and ‘illegitimate’ Elizabeth. The point is driven home by the Latin motto ‘Virescit Vulnere Virtus’ (virtue flourishes by wounding). (source:vam.ac.uk)
Embroidery also enabled Mary to communicate with her supporters by sending coded messages hidden in her needlework.
In the realm of espionage, traditional handicraft skills were to take on an even more covert dimension during the World Wars when prisoners, spies and resistance members used embroidery to pass on information under the noses of their enemies. After all, who would suspect that something as innocent as an embroidery or tapestry could offer any threat from the enemy? Morse code and binary code were easily represented using a combination of long and short stitches, or French knots and seed stitches, and these would go undetected when hidden amongst other decorative stitches. Other methods required the person receiving the work to “undo” the embroidery as messages were hidden in the padding of trapunto or concealed beneath a second layer of embroidery.
Knitting was another innocent looking but very useful craft when it came to espionage. Morse Code knitters employed single purl stitches for dots and sequences of three purl stitches for dashes. Their sequences translated into short and long coded signals. Some knitters used knots to conceal Morse code by tying specific configurations to represent dots and dashes, or varying the distances between their knots. These encoded messages could then be discreetly passed across enemy lines or integrated into knitted items such as hats and scarves to be decoded by the recipient. Written messages were also known to have been passed on, hidden in balls of wool! This practise wasn’t exclusive to the allies. Using a system similar to Morse, German agents based in the UK also passed encoded messages using knotted yarn which was then knitted in to garments.
Although an extremely dangerous occupation it’s said that the practise of covert knitting became so prevalent during WWII, some countries actually banned the posting of knitting patterns aboard, fearing they may carry coded information to the enemy. During times of war, a knitter was often more than just a creator of warm garments; they were also keen observers and messengers, their needles clicking away as they kept watch. (Source: Timoneillstudios.com)
Image Source: ww2wrecks.com
I will leave you with an embroidery created by one Major Alexis Casdagli. Alexis was captured and spent four years in a German POW camp where he passed the time in the innocent pursuit of cross stitch. He also set up a stitch school, teaching other POWs to embroider. Of the many embroideries he made this piece was so admired by his captors that they proudly hung it in the castle where he was being held and subsequently had it displayed in three other camps.
The prisoners must have found it very amusing that the guards had no idea of the defiant message hiding in the Morse dots and dashes stitched around the borders which read “God Save The King” and “Fxxx Hitler”. Fortunatelyitwas never deciphered during those four years and so the embroidery, and the Major survived the war. He told his son on his return that the Red Cross saved his life but embroidery saved his sanity!
I seem to have a fascination with gadgets that I can attach to my sewing machine. Recently I purchased a Flower Stitch foot as well as a Punch Tool. I haven’t taken the Punch Tool out of the box yet but did manage to take some time out to play with the Flower Stitch foot.
I watched a Facebook video of Dale Rollerson/The Thread Studio using the Flower Stitch foot. I love Dale’s videos. If I ever get to Perth, Australia I would love to meet up with her. Probably never happen but one never knows!
She sells the Flower Stitch Foot on her website plus a booklet she wrote called Let’s Play with the Flower Stitcher. I’ve been searching the internet to try to find this booklet within the US but so far no such luck has come my way. Postage on the booklet from Australia would cost more than the booklet itself. Sigh…. maybe one day I will run across it and not have to pay so much postage.
There are several of the Flower Stitch Foot devices being sold in the US, however. I purchased mine from The Colorful World of Sewing. They are based in New York state. Here is a link to how the foot looks.
They had some good information on their website and said that there were adaptations to my Bernina’s machine shank that would allow me to use this foot. The Flower Stitch Foot and the adaptor price seemed reasonable to me as most of my Bernina presser feet are $100 on up. I went ahead and ordered it.
The first thing I did was make a sampler on some cotton fabric with a stabilizer backing fabric. I played with all my basic stitches and was quite surprised with the results in circular form.
This 10″ x 10″ sampler was done using the largest setting. The setting range on the foot runs from about 1/4” to 3/4” or 6mm-18mm. I usually stitched around the circles 3 times. As I got into the stitches from #20 to #40, things started getting a little wonky if I went around more than one time. Maybe I was using too large a piece of fabric? Unfortunately, I had to get back to some other projects I was needing to finish up, so the foot sat in its little box for several months. I left this sampler out next to my sewing machine though so I could think about where I wanted to go with it once I could get back to it.
What attracted my interest in using this foot for my future projects was the ability to use wash away stabilizer. I want to be able to make separate circles that I could put here and there within the body of a project I am working on. I was concerned however, with how the stitches would hold together once the stabilizer was washed away, so I decided to put a layer of tulle with the wash away stabilizer. I put the two layers into a hoop and got ready to try the foot again. I’d already put the Flower Stitch foot onto my machine, which is quite fiddly to attach. Then I realized I can’t get the hoop under the foot. Not enough clearance like my regular feet give me. That is an inconvenient feature! I have to take the foot off each time I have to take the hoop away from the sewing machine. And I also have to be careful that there is enough clearance for the foot to move the fabric and hoop around and not come into contact with the hoop so it messes up its flow. I think my little Flower Foot is telling me it doesn’t like hoops!
Here is the first sample before washing the stabilizer out and after. Threads used for this one were a mix of rayon and polyester. I played with doing the larger circle in one type of stitch, then doing a smaller circle using another type of stitch inside. Sometimes I would try the small size first, then the larger size. The foot definitely has a mind of its own!
The addition of the tulle helped keep the stitches in place. One problem I am noticing is that multiple stitch rotations and the thickness the thread is creating is causing the foot to shift so the circle is no longer lining up with itself. I may have to play a bit with my presser bar tension to see if I can keep this from happening because I prefer having the circles more prominent.
Next, I thought I would try using cotton fabric with some thin quilting batting. And I used cotton threads because I wanted to add an acrylic paint wash over the stitches. I wasn’t fond of the brown threads so I switched to grey. This fabric combo seemed to work better as far as keeping the circles in a circle but I still had problems. Again, I think it is because of going around 2 or 3 rotations. I didn’t use a hoop with this one. You can see how the grey flowers are a bit wonky on the 3rd rotation.
Here is the front and back after applying the acrylic wash.
I think I like the back better than the front but I really like how the grey cotton threads took the paint. This method could be interesting using white cotton thread with color washes.
Next, I tried some chiffon scarf fabric with the wash away in a hoop. I was attempting to replicate a flower someone had made on a YouTube video. Have to say, I failed spectacularly on this one! I didn’t have enough room in the hoop to make the flower center and have enough fabric around it to use for the petals. Later I will try this process without a hoop. Maybe I’ll have to use two layers of wash away with the chiffon. And maybe two or more layers of chiffon would also work. I’ll try to find and review that YouTube video and see what fabric they used to make their flower.
Next, I got brave and put two layers of wash away in my largest hoop which is a 10 ½” x 11”. I’ve been successfully using this large hoop for my other machine embroidery projects and wondered if it would give the foot more room to stay away from the hoop edge as well as give me more space to add more circles. For this sample I wanted to try out some other threads I have in my stash. I especially wanted to try out some variegated thread and use three different size circle settings. I was still having problems if I went around more than one time. BUT…I was kind of liking how it made things wonky. Who wants perfect circles anyway, right?
I think my big hoop is too much for the foot to try to move around and perhaps that is why the circles went wonky. That plus I was having a hard time keeping the screw tight that holds the circle size in place. I had to get my screw driver out versus hand tightening it. I think the hoop may have been causing this to happen too. Too much bouncing going on as the foot tried to pivot the fabric and the hoop around the circle. I think I am asking too much of my little foot.
I found some thread that I definitely don’t like to work with. It’s pretty, but it kept breaking and then did this to me…. froze my whole machine up, needle down. Ugh!
Look at how wonky most of these are!
Since I didn’t add tulle or chiffon to the two wash away layers, I was going to have to attach each circle to something to keep it from falling apart when I rinsed it. I decided to just do some freehand machine circles to get everything connected. One nice thing about using wash away is that you can cut things apart once it dries because it gets kind of stiff, so some of these could become individual circles.
It’s been interesting and fun playing with the Flower Stitch foot! I still have some ideas I want to try out, like trying to figure out how to do multiple stitch rounds and not have it go off kilter and making a sampler of each stitch in the different sizes available. Mainly I want to be able to create these shapes as individual circle pieces so I can incorporate them into my art quilts or my collages. I definitely need more practice with it!
I love my toys!
Happy creating and best wishes to you all in 2026!
Along the way we were participants in all the side excursions. Many involved local industry such as lacquer work, silk production, silk weaving and water hyacinth weaving etc, (water hyacinth is very abundant along the river!). It can be argued that these venues are purely for the tourists, and I agree to an extent….All I can say is that without these excursions I might not have been able to, easily, access the sites. What I did see was that we were a small part of helping these crafts to survive, providing much needed employment (often for disabled persons) within the communities, whilst also allowing the skills to be passed on….but this is not a discussion for this post!
1) 07-12-2025 Jan Demo, Glengarry Museum
2.1) The sample piece was used as a basket cover for demos, one of my felt hats to the Left of the basket
3.1) Jack Lain teaching how to weave a reversing border for a folded hem.
3.2) Jack showing one of his Overshot coverlets (he also did tartan coverlets, three panels wide)
3.3) 08-23-2014 Twist Saturday Art Yarn with Esther Rodgers
3.4) art yarn with Esther close up
3.5) Sarafina Fiber Art, Mermaid Felt Along 1: Armature, May 9, 2020, keeping us sane during the pandemic.
3.6) The mermaid she made during the felt along.
3.7) Ann McElroy teaching wet felting
3.8- 3.9) careful use of water in wet felting
4.1) OVWSG January Meeting, the Zoom attendees outnumbered the in-person people
4.2-4.3) participating in the studio and online
