Theatre Textiles – More Crowns

Theatre Textiles – More Crowns

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Some time after the Panto to be performed in February 2026 had been chosen and before rehearsals started in 2025 I was approached by the director of what is to be our 2027 Panto to give some thought to making headdresses for the villain and her cohorts.

That Panto is to be Goldilocks and the 3 Bears.  Apparently the “baddie” in this version is a Queen bee, and the director is thinking well ahead – which makes a nice change from the usual last minute panic.  Anyway, I set about thinking how best and how cheaply to do this.

But before I got very far I was asked by our wardrobe mistress to make crowns for the King and Queen of Gooseland, for the 2026 Panto, which was to be Mother Goose.  By this time we were well into rehearsal and so I had to stop thinking about bees and start thinking about geese.  The wardrobe mistress wanted crowns that fit around the head rather than “tiara” type that sit on top.  They should be white and should incorporate goose feathers.

We had some white feathers in stock, but none long enough to look like goose feathers, so first of all I would have to make some.  We had, in our initial discussion, thought about how many would be needed.  I was anxious that a fully feathered crown should not make the king look as if he was aping a native American Indian chief wearing a War Bonnet.  We decided that I would make 5 feathers for each crown, taller ones for the king and slightly shorter for the queen.

I used one of my white nonwoven cotton cloths and some black (all I had) plastic rods.  I used an old and well washed cloth, which when ironed stretched and ironed again became paper thin but remained flexible.  I cut 10 strips about 2” wide and 8 or 9 inches long.  Using “washable PVA glue … (yes, I’d never heard of it before either, it was a gift from our odd job man/friend.  According to the lable on the bottle it was a mixture of water, PVA, glycerine, stearic acid and sodium hydroxide) …  as I was saying, using washable PVA glue I stuck 2 lengths of the cloth together, sandwiching a plastic rod part way up the middle – short of the top and protruding from the bottom, so that it represented the quill.  In this way I made 10 basic shapes which I trimmed into feather shapes, and carved 2 or 3 “notches’” randomly in the sides to add to the feather-like appearance.  I painted the black quills white and, to give them extra strength, painted each side of the feathers with more of the PVA.

A bottle of washable PVA glue with 5 part made artificial feathers
Making the feathers. That funny bottle shape at the bottom right is one of my eyedrop dispensers but handy for spreading glue!

Then I could consider the design of each crown; the king’s would need to be “manly” and the queen’s elegant.  Having gone through my design source images I chose 2 crowns from the film version of Lord of the Rings on which to base my ideas – Elron’s crown for the Gooseland queen (No he’s not a bloke, he’s an elegant Elf – can’t you see his pointy ears?) and Aragorn’s for the king.

I went through my stash of beads, stones and jewels and picked out items which could adorn either crown – the idea being that although they weren’t identical they would be a pair.  I found a strip of muslin which had pearls and clear beads already attached to it and also some large round green cabochons mounted in “silver” frames.  I painted the stones with several coats of pearl coloured nail varnish and I brightened the frames with a coat of silver nail varnish, and both with a top coat of clear.

[I find nail varnish very useful in making costumes and props, so whenever I see any reduced in price, especially odd colours, or colourless, I snap them up.]

Having obtained approval for my ideas from the director and the wardrobe mistress, I then had to wait some weeks before I received details of the king and queen’s head sizes.  We had a cast of 35 in this Panto, some of whom played more than one character, and there were at least 2 costumes for most of the characters, not to mention 5 or 6 for Mother Goose, the dame.  It is not surprising therefore that our poor wardrobe mistress, who does most of the work herself with the help of a couple of members, took some time to get round to sorting the wigs for the king and queen and measuring their resulting head sizes.  Once I had these I was able to get a gallop on!

I started with the queen’s crown.  I made a drawing based on the Elrond crown and then blew it up to the size needed. I transferred 2 copies of the pattern to the card stock I was going to use, cut them out and, after auditioning the feathers and jewellery as to placement, proceed to decorate one of them.

I’m not keen on using just glue for holding things together, whether on costumes, on props or on actors (I once lost my Polly parrot beak mid performance!)  It’s belt and braces for me, so I sewed the strip of muslin with the pearl and clear beads along one of the sections of the crown, front to back on either side of the centre “V”. I also sewed the feathers to the inside of the crown and I added a shield shape to the back of the centre front to add a bit of strength.  It was as well that I had cut out a second pattern, the stitching of the muslin to the narrow sections of the crown in fact weakened the card.  So I attached the second pattern to the inside of the crown and then added a cut out shape of non-slip mat to the inside front of the crown.  I was concerned that the weight of the stones on the front might cause the crown to slide down the actor’s forehead.  (In the end however I needn’t have bothered as the actor’s coarse and curly wig had a large fringe, on which the crown sat, but again belt and braces I suppose.)  Finally I joined the two ends of the crown with a large hook and eye (the sort covered in fabric and normally used by furriers) painted white.

Then on to the King’s crown.  I had found somewhere on the internet a pattern page of the pieces used to make a version of Aragorn’s crown.

page of patterns for the parts of Aragorn's crown
Pattern for Aragorn’s Crown

I liked the basic idea of some form of emblem at the front which could hold up the feathers but I didn’t want to use the actual design from Aragorn’s crown – it was too “serious” and the Gooseland King was a comic part – so after trying out various shapes, which would also hold 3 of the cabochon stones, I decided to use a shield shape, with a smaller version at the back and smaller versions still at the two sides.  I decided that I would not use the remainder of the muslin with the pearl and clear beads for the King’s crown (too feminine) so I decided to add a border of yarn around the edges of everything to add a sort of metallic rim as if the metalsmith had added a border of twisted metal, as indicated on the page of pattern pieces. So here I deviated from my glue+ method and just soaked some white yarn in PVA and ran it around the edges of the shields and the bands of the crown.  I did stitch the cabochons to the front shield and also the feathers.  I covered this on the inside with another shield shaped piece of card.  I wasn’t sure how to decorate the two side and the back shields and I wondered if I could find a suitable monogram for Gooseland.  In the end I found, somewhere on line, a drawing of a winged shield, I added a capital G to the centre of that and printed off three copies which I attached to the centre of the 3 blank shields.

Once all the glue was dry I packed them up and delivered the Crowns a couple of days before the first dress rehearsal.

Now I can go back to thinking about bees.

 

More Nametag samples and the Nametag workshop

More Nametag samples and the Nametag workshop

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Back in February, I showed you some of the samples I had been making for my most recent workshop, Felted nametags.  This was the first running of it so I had to organize notes, samples and figure out student supplies. It was exciting and very stressful!

I wound up with nine samples, which were highly enjoyable to make. It is an opportunity to work on a small project, or try a new technique you want to explore, but maybe not on a large size project. They were also very portable and easy to start and stop work on. (I have a few more I would like to work on too)

8 samples of techneeks used for name tags1.1) samples from the workshop

I have been continuing my investigating using iron on interfacing as a tracing medium to transfer the image from my reference to the felt.

So far I have notice a few things, and can see the usefulness of this approach for some projects. I have tried the “thin” interfacing from fabric land, which seems to be the same weight and transparency to the “Medium weight” interfacing from Walmart. I also purchased a meter of double-sided fusible “interfacing”, it’s just glue on both sides and is extremely transparent. The problem with the double sided fusible was it was too see through, so much so that it leaked ink through the surface to the image beneath. (What a mess) it may be useable with different pens or markers. I tried a ink roller pen (fancy pen for handwriting –it was that archaic way of communicating before keyboards were invented). I am not totally giving up on the double sided but it will need the rite marking device to make it work unlike the true interfacing which was very effective.

I could see using interfacing to trace out a tree or fence rails then position them on the finished felted background. This would allow you to have wild tumultuous sky that flowed cohesively across the background. This can be harder to achieve if you are felting around where a tree will be or where a tree already is in your felted picture. I can see the appeal of getting lost in creating the sky then just drop the tree or fence shaped interfacing down when you are done.

photo of muskox covered by interfacing showing partal transparencly2.1) I went with a muskox to try out the interfacing.

showing tranpernet sticky note over same foto as 2.12.2) I also looked at the transparent sticky notes, which was more see through, but would work better using the template transfer method.

photo taped to window with interface over photo2.3) using a window as a light box

A sunnier day may have made it even easier to see the image of the muskox, but even with the dark picture, tracing using the window as a light table was still not too challenging.

close up of same foto with lines being drawn on interface2.4)close up of image and tracing on interfacing

lifting interface to inspect traced image2.5) lifting interface to check drawing

compairing tracing and photo2.6)side by side comparison of image and tracing.

I did find that the sharpie marker did leak through to the image just a bit. You can see some of the marker dots along the ground line under the muskox.

checking positioning of muskox on felt backing (is it the rite size)2.7) a quick check of the position of the muskox on the felt background

Remove the parts of the interfacing not covered by fiber. You can see I have not totally thought this through; I have to remove the space between the legs, as well as the ground he is standing on, which will not be necessary ether when I add the background.

removed the muskox and started to create background for muskox (so i dont work around the image) 2.81) removed interface muskox and I created a background

I put aside the image and started work on the back ground.

positioning imasge on interfacing on the close to compleat background2.82) positioning interface muskox on background with a pin

Once the background was done I pined into place the muskox. Still have a bit of trimming to do. I will notice that shortly.

starting and muskox and then trimming off excess around legs, acidently cut off leg and had to use pin to position it 2.83) OOPS! I cut off a leg, found it and held it in place with a pin

While trimming off the areas which will not be covered by fiber, I accidently cut off a leg and left part of the negative space….. I can fix that. I found the missing appendage and used a pin to position it. Once a bit of wool was added I could remove the pin and continue creating the image. (I love felt, it’s so forgiving, you can add a missing appendage!!!)

finisheing last tuches to background now that the muskox is compleat.2.84) adding a stream to the background

I found that a T-42-222 needle was effective. It passed through the interfacing without distorting it. I found working with the needle in a vertical orientation, until the interfacing was securely attached to the felt ground worked best. Once secure, felting at an angle worked fine.

I want to try ironing on the interfacing to the felt, to see how that would effect shifting or distorting, but that would involve finding the iron…. which has chosen an excellent hiding spot in the basement… somewhere past the stairs, Pretty sneaky of it. I will let you know how that goes, when I brave the stairs and find it. But, not today.

I also have prepped a couple little frogs and a dragon fly, Ann insisted I needed more than just sheep as options for the workshop.

image with frogs on to p of this is (R dubble sided "interfacing") on L one sided interfacing.3.1) On the left the lightweight iron on interfacing, on the right double sided fusible (iron on glue not really interfacing)

2 more examples frogs and dragon fly traced then cut out of interfacing. closer shot of the drasgon fly3.2) tracing onto interfacing then cutting out the image allows the image to be positioned on the felt ground where you would like.

The Nametag workshop was a Thursday evening mini-workshop. It was a bit more mini than I was anticipating. I had the odd idea I would have about 3 hours and discovered it was about half that. Oops. Next time make sure it’s a longer time slot!

How can I speed up the process and still get a nice name tag?

For the base, we are working with the Horticultural felt, which felts down to a nice solid nametag but it takes a while, a couple hours to add wool over top and increase the density. If we add a craft felt over top of the 100% wool, and switched from one needle, to a punch tool, it would take a lot less time to create a solid colour base to start from. I tried and sure enough, using craft felt and a fake clover punch tool it was about 6 minutes of intense yet controlled pummeling, created a reasonable starting place. (Remember to lift the nametag regularly, so it doesn’t stick to your work surface)

Front and back of garden felt with craft felt covering one side and wraping the edges4.1) front and back covering Horticultural felt with craft felt to give a solid colour base.

If you cut the craft felt about 1 inch bigger than your base felt, you can use a single needle to tack the extra around to the back of the base. I did an origami corner to make them look neat. Once tacked in at an angle I flipped back to the front and used the punch tool to solidify the edges. If your craft felt is similar in thinness to pre-felt, you can always add 2 layers, rather than the 1 have added here. You can also cover the base with more than one colour, ( blue sky and green grass).

Tracing onto interfacing is faster than templating an image but I could speed up adding the image even more if we tried stencils, which would allow us to draw on the covered base.

Using stencils for the students are also helpful if they are uncomfortable drawing free hand. Stencils can be approached in a number of ways. The most obvious is to use them to trace an image or a group of images directly onto either the felt or interfacing then felt from the created image.  I did this with the bee stencil and I used part of a Mandela pattern, both drawn directly onto the wool felt. I tried one of my non-sharpie pens for the Mandela, it did not go well and started transferring to the side of my hand. I stopped and went over the image with the permanent sharpie which stayed where I had put it.

using stence to make pattern to felt. blue was not a perminent marker and rubed off on the side of my hand4.2) blue ink smudged on the side of my hand so I redrew it in permanent sharpie

I had selected part of a circular mandala. I am not sure I chose the best part, it looked fine when I started but my fiber colour choices, the bag of fiber sitting beside the desk was the bag of pink I had purchased to replace the missing bag of pink. As I started to add colour I realized the pattern looked a bit demonic.

showing drafting fiber to draw a line around shapes4.3) outlining some of the shapes by drafting out combed top.

I was not happy with the smudging from the blue marker (not a sharpie) so I added a light pink between the shapes. I also found the demonic face affect I had accidently created a bit less disturbing if I turned the image the other way around.

showing the same image upside down and rite side up. one looks like a demon face.4.4) sometimes its good to be flexible as to which way the design wants to go

The other stance example I made was treating the image in a more 3-D  way. I had selected the Bee image and added one to each end of the base felt.

stencels creating bees directly on the garden felt5.1) adding bees to the nametag

although it is easyer to add the bees after the background is already there, you can felt the bees first then add the back ground, its just fidily and takes longer.5.2) Adding the background around the images (not as fast as adding the image to the background, but felting is flexible, and you can approach felting in lots of different ways)

i found the original size too small so added more fiber to one side5.3) adding white wool to make a larger name tag

I decided that I wanted more space for the name on the tag so decided to add a “bit” more white fiber to create more background.  You can see from the back how much that little bit was. (1/3 horticultural felt and 2/3 added wool fiber)

cutting between the bees has given me 2 nametags to work on5.4) cutting the extended name tags into two tags

Luckily I am felting and not spinning so I can use scissors on the wool!! I cut it into 2 name tags each with one bee.

bee on left with Flowers, bullrush and pond, Bee on R has blue sky and may get a beehive 5.5) the bee with bull rush and flowers near pond I think is done, I am still considering the bee with sky I may add a bee hive?

One of my students used a textural pattern stencil of trees in silhouette. Instead of tracing the image onto the felt, she used small clumps of wool directly into the stencil. She was able to create a cracked mud effect without having to get wet!!

using stencel to get an effect that looked like craked mud but only with needles 5.6) cool effect using a stencil

As you saw at the beginning, I had a selection of examples to help inspire the students. So I should show you a few shots of the workshop. I was very focused on teaching but my very patent and helpful husband took a few shots (than read his book and had a nap) so there are not too many to inflict upon you.

tables set up with 3 tables of fiber in the background. close up of notes6.1) tables set up for workshop with 3  six foot tables full of bags of fiber, close up of notes

Unlike the hefty book of notes from the needle felted landscape workshop, this wound up to be 10 pages of notes and 2 pages of sheep line drawings. I also had 5 or 6  sheets of sheep, alpaca, lama, frogs, dragonflies, and muskox.  They were options to trace onto the interfacing.

various work serfaces6.2)  I had samples of various work surfaces (from the bottom of the pile: upholstery foam, larger and smaller wool mats, very well used garden kneeling pad, and commercial felt stuck together at edges with a piece of sponge inside and pens (sharpies in colours)

cookies to keep us going and bandaids to keep us carefull6.3)  I had cookies and cautionary Band-Aids

other suplys on the end of teh table6.4) the craft felt came in quite a few colours, I had punch tools, carding brush, ribbons, horticultural felt , scissors, painters tape and wire cutters and benders.

closer shot of the 3 six foot long tables with large bags of fiber sorted by colours6.5) close up of the 3 tables of bags of fiber to work from

At 7pm we had 5 of the 8 students in the room. I started teaching Glenn took over photography as well as reading and napping. (he got distracted so there are only a few of me teaching.)

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6.6-6.8) Glenn’s shots of the workshop

I think the students enjoyed themselves, but it defiantly needs more time, I hate to rush students (that usually requires more Band-Aids!).

I still have a few more samples I want to make. I have a couple of people who will check over the notes so I can amend them. I want them to have reference material to get them restarted if it takes them a little while to get around to their next project.

 

Update: I found out that two of my missing students had a dog emergency, surgery (the dog was doing better now), the other was out of town and came in to the social today to work on her project. I had a small supply of wool and other things she could use. She did a landscape with a rainbow sheep! She still was working on getting it just rite, and will add her name when she is ready. I gave her a goodly length of buffalo roving (it’s very thin unspun roving). I had a few natural tones, but was looking for other colours. I was able to find 2 cakes of it in variegated blue/brown and whitish, and a soft denim blue at the Peterborough fiber festival last Saturday. I bot both. I hope to find some other colours eventually since they are so easy to make letters with.

I was going to tell you about the shopping trip to Peterborough, about a 3 hour drive (266km) there and the same back) and the Photography workshop the next day. But this has been a long post and I will show you shopping when we get a chance to chat again.

Have you investigated working with interfacing as a way of transferring images? Have you tried to iron it on first? Have you any tips or suggestions? Have fun and keep felting.

Making a Shell

Making a Shell

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After seeing Helene use some prefelt ribbon, I decided to give it a try too. I am thinking of differential shrinkage to get the shape of a shell.  I thought it might work well with a spider conch shell to make the ridges.

I got my ribbon from the Olive Sparrow in Toronto. She doesn’t have it on her Etsy, but if you contact her, she has it. You can, of course, make prefelt and cut strips. But this is a fast and easy way to get going.

I made a 2-part resist so there would be an overlap on one side.

I made the inside pink, then added strips of the prefelt ribbon.

I added some blue for the outside. Sorry for the really bad picture.

Then of course the was lots of rubbing. I am using a rubbing tool from Moose Hill. It has a nice weight, not too heavy like others I have tried. I like to start gently.  It does have a nice, wide handle, so it’s easy to hold and press down when that is what you want. Jan used my phone to take many of these pictures for me. She took about a dozen of this one, complaining that I was not smiling. Seems I do not smile when I am working.

Once it had shrunk a little, I cut out the resist and removed the non-spined side of the extra resist. If I left it, I think there would have been too much to curl inside for the middle of the shell. Then of course, fulling and shaping.

It wasn’t long into the fulling when I knew I had not used enough prefelt to get the differential shrinkage I wanted. I suppose I should have known better. But often that’s the way. You need to be reminded of what you already know.

Still, it didn’t turn out so bad

When I got home, I fulled the ridges in some and then clipped it all into shape to dry. As you can see, this made the base of the folded part pointy, and that remained after I took the clips off and let it spread out.

I wet just that part and fulled it back to round in a very short time. I had been anticipating a fight with it.  I had tried to shrink this part more before clipping it with no success. This just reminded me of how, sometimes,  it is easy to get more shrinkage after it has rested or dried and is rewet. I have no idea why that works, but it does.

After it was dry again, I was not happy with how the top with the points wanted to curl around instead of standing out, so I put a couple of invisible stitches at each end to hold it in position.

And finished. I like the finished shell, even if it didn’t go the way I planned.

I may give it another try over the summer, but as spring slowly arrives here( we had a little snow again the other day), I find I have lots of ideas and more energy to do things. I have things to make for the guild sale in the fall.

Nuno felted "watercolor" landscape with couched yarn tree, close up of branches.
Embellished “Watercolor” Landscape

Embellished “Watercolor” Landscape

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Nuno felted Kitakata paper painted with watercolor paint and water added to move paint.

I am still working on the “watercolor landscape” samples that I created. This one is nuno felted paper that has had watercolor applied after the felting process. It needs a bit more, doesn’t it?

Printed photo of landscape with tree drawn over the landscape in pencil.

I scanned the piece on my printer so I had the exact size of the piece printed out. I then drew a tree over the landscape in pencil. Instead of trying to transfer the design of the tree on to the piece, I decided to just mark where the edges of the trunk were on the top and bottom.

Nuno felted "watercolor" landscape with couched yarn tree.

I didn’t get any photos of the stitching process as I stitched it mainly while traveling. I had found a variety of grey yarn that I couched down with a dark grey cotton machine thread. I tried to give an impression of depth of the tree with the values of grey. I followed my sketch but “edited” out some of the smaller branches.

Here’s a couple of close ups of the stitching.

Nuno felted "watercolor" landscape with couched yarn tree on light grey hand dyed background fabric.

The next step was to find a piece of background (matte) fabric. I stitched the felt piece on to this hand dyed grey background that I already had in my stash. Luckily, it was a blue grey tone that matched the watercolors. The piece was then stretched and laced around matte board. Then it’s ready for a frame.

Nuno felted "watercolor" landscape with couched yarn tree framed.

Here it is in the frame and ready to go to the gallery. This piece in the frame is 8″ x 10″ and I have decided to name it “Solitude”.

Knitting adventure continued.

Knitting adventure continued.

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My post this month is another mixture of things.  I have continued my reacquaintance with knitting, and I want to become a more skilled hand knitter.  It is such a comfortable task to sit with in the evenings, and time passes very easily.  I have made another hat, and an asymmetric triangular scarf.  I loved the hat that Carlene wears sometimes, and Ann suggested where to get the pattern.  This hat has a wonderful name “Anemone Hat”, the main body looks so complicated, but is quite straightforward really.

Pattern obtained, then some time spent studying it, especially the rib, or the Moebius half-twist as it is called.  However, I have only just become familiar working with a circular needle, so this form of beginning the hat was a stretch too far for me, or a little like ‘double dutch’ as the expression goes, so I did some plain knit and purl rows instead.  I may try the moebius another time.  The yarn used was from my sister, and is King Cole stylecraft, 50% wool and 50% acrylic.  There is a much wider variety of yarn types today than was available when I was younger.

Leonor connected me to a free pattern for a scarf on her website, that promised to be easy to knit.  I had one skein of wool, from West Yorkshire spinners 70% Falkland wool, 20% lyocell, and 10% Cashmere, in a lovely soft green shade, and is soft to touch.  I was hoping it would be soft around my neck, because sometimes wool can be prickly.

I needed help with a scarf because I could not figure out how the triangular shape would be achieved; in the end this achievement was actually quite simple really.  So I began knitting, starting with a few stitches and ended up with over 150 or so, and I could carry on until I was happy with the length, with enough yarn to continue, and in the end I had a triangular scarf.  Then a cool wash and pinned it onto the ironing board to block it.  I practiced some simple lace pattern stitches to break up the plain knitting.

Early on during the winter, the Dean of Gloucester Cathedral put out a call for some volunteer embroidery people to help repair an altar cloth that has a lot of wear and tear from use over the years.  I belong to a group of women who do crewel work; we meet twice a month for two hours each time, to work on our own projects, or just to stitch.  Four of us decided to help out with this task, and we car share twice a month over to the Cathedral.  The Dean provides use with tea and coffee! Gloucester is about a 45 minute drive from me.

The altar cloth needs repair to many areas.  All of the embroidered motifs have been appliqued onto a base of hard wearing linen.  Many of the motifs have become loose, and some of the motif threads are degrading almost as soon as they are touched.  There is a lot of gold work on the cloth too, much of this is also loose, and takes time to stitch back down, but so worth the effort, and it makes for a lovely sheen on the work.  We are using cotton embroidery thread, and some silk thread.

The cloth will be returned to use as an altar cloth, we are repairing it for use during church services, and not to museum conservation quality.

No one is quite sure how old the cloth is, the embroidery thread is disintegrating in places, and the only thread that is not perishing is the white thread that is couched around each motif.  This is an example to us of how likely it is that the dye used could be the main reason for the coloured threads to perish.

This work will keep us all busy for some months, but I do enjoy it.  A sample of my stitching is the featured image – practice work really.

Two skeins of hand spun alpaca fibre side by side, the one on the left hasn't been washed and the one on the right has.
My wheel gets some maintenance and the alpaca gets a bath

My wheel gets some maintenance and the alpaca gets a bath

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How often do you do maintenance on your craft/hobby/fibre/work-related objects? That is, how often do you oil your wheel, change the needle on your sewing machine, clean your carding brushes? I bet this isn’t a type of question that gets asked much outside woolly circles (although “how often do you wash your hairbrush” really should be a thing in my opinion!)

A while ago, my Lendrum spinning wheel started squeaking a bit. Every rotation, I’d get a “squee, squee, squee” sound that annoyed me to no end. It finally dawned on me that it may be time to show it some love and add a few drops of machine oil onto its metal bits. I pretended I knew what I was doing, hummed and harrumphed a few times (like how I imagined a seasoned mechanic would when looking at an old car) and what do you know? The squeak was gone. Hoorah!

Then it dawned on me that other parts of the wheel might also be in need of some TLC. I bought a WooLee Winder a number of years ago and although that, too, had been subjected to some oiling in the past, I had never once disassembled the thing to do a deep cleaning. To put things in better context, I’ve been spinning raw alpaca… If you know your camelids, you’ll know those adorable guys can get very dusty! My winder had started to stutter and stop in one specific place lately, and I could see dirt accumulating on the outside of the shuttle groove, so I really needed to do something about it.

WooLee Winder on a Lendrum wheel
Photo courtesy of the WooLee Winder website. This one looks pristine, mine looked dirtyyyyy.

Being the independent woman that I am, I forged a plan: watch a couple of YouTube videos, dismantle the thing, clean it thoroughly, drink a well-deserved cup of tea afterwards and enjoy my feminist success.

I did Step One very successfully, then immediately changed tact: I delegated the task to Husband (meaning: I chickened out of playing with an expensive piece of equipment and asked him to do it for me, so I could blame him in case it all went awry).

Two hands are shown in the process of taking apart the WooLee Winder
I was offering useful supervision the whole thing (meaning: I was the backseat driver)

Trust me, the photo doesn’t begin to show how terribly dusty the whole thing was. Once it all came apart, I was aghast at how a piece of shiny metal could actually look dull and brownish. See the amount of fibre I removed from the inside!

Closeup of my hand holding some fluff I removed from the WooLee Winder
This was the fluff that was preventing my winder from working properly. Or so I thought.

Now the plot twist: once the WooLee Winder was reassembled, I was happily back at my wheel and ready to gunk it up with more alpaca; I was spinning away, when the thing kept stopping exactly in the same spot as before it was cleaned. Why, ye gods, why?!

The answer? I only thought I’d cleaned it correctly. Turns out, the amount of fluff you see in the pic was just the tip of the iceberg. Husband, I require your services and tools once again! This time we spent time really looking at every nook and cranny, and managed to remove some more debris. It wasn’t actually much more, but it was enough to prevent the mechanism from moving as it should.

It was finally working like a charm. I felt I went from driving a beaten-up Alfa Romeo to a Ferrari – that thing was faster than I remember and I had to adjust my wheel’s settings because as it turns out, I’d been making my Lendrum work harder than it needed to compensate for my inadequate maintenance efforts.

Now, to illustrate how much dust I’d been adding to the WooLee Winder, I present one of my alpaca skein baths. This was the second wash.

A skein of alpaca hand spun yarn is under very dirty brown, soapy water
Ew.

Is it any wonder my equipment needed some TLC? You’ll be surprised to know I am now planning on cleaning the winder again after I am done spinning this fleece…

Finally, a picture of two skeins of hand spun alpaca side by side. The left one is before washing and the right one is after; notice how the fibre has bloomed. I’m never short of amazed at how much fibres transform after a warm soak.

Two skeins of hand spun alpaca fibre side by side, the one on the left hasn't been washed and the one on the right has.

Next on my cleaning list is coming up with a way to clean my (currently very dusty) wool carders without water. Any ideas? How do you maintain yours?

I hope this post has inspired you to look at your precious tools and offering them some love. They help us be better at our crafts, after all. We need to keep them in top condition! Don’t be like me…

 

WHERE ART MEETS EMBROIDERY PART 2 (LEVEL 3 STUDENT’S WORK)

WHERE ART MEETS EMBROIDERY PART 2 (LEVEL 3 STUDENT’S WORK)

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Earlier this month, Ruth Lane’s blog post covered work done by Gail Harker’s Level 4 students. Check that post out here.

https://feltingandfiberstudio.com/2026/03/21/where-art-meets-embroidery/

My post will cover work done by two of the five Level 3 students, Gloria Shelton and myself.

Here we are at the Opening Reception which was held on February 28th.

4 women
Tesi Vaara, Penny Peters, Gail Harker, Gloria Shelton

The exhibition Where Art Meets Embroidery is currently on display at the Pacific Northwest Quilt and Fiber Art Museum (QFA) in LaConner, Washington USA through May 31st.

As Ruth stated in her post, if you live locally, please do try to visit the museum to see our exhibition in person. Photos don’t really do this work justice.

I’ve been on this creative journey with Gail Harker since about 2013. I finished Level 3 Art and Design in 2019. At the completion of that course, we had our exhibition in her studio in LaConner. That was more of a hands-on exhibition for the students as we learned how to display our own work. The museum handled the displays for this exhibition.

We did, however, have the opportunity to rent a space across the street from the museum for two days right after the exhibition opened so that we could share our working notebooks, samples and other artwork that was not at the museum. This was my favorite part as we got to share the story of our work process with people one on one. When you work on a piece for so many hours, it’s nice to see the process from a different person’s perspective. Visitors spent hours going through all of our sketchbooks. Some even bounced back and forth between the two venues several times.

One of my tables had work from Level 3 Art and Design and Level 3 Experimental Stitch.

artwork and sketchbook information

L3 Art and Design work against the wall and L3 Experimental Stitch on the table

Table display of working sketchbooks
Table display of color schemes and print to stitch sampling

Here is a photo of Gloria’s table items.

Gloria Shelton’s table with work samples of her Paris piece

Now, let’s move over to the actual museum exhibit…

Gloria made a poster-type wall hanging after visiting Paris. Her husband took the photo of the three policemen on skates.

The policemen were printed onto fabric and are heavily stitched.  The rest of the components of this piece are also heavily stitched.

artist with stitched artwork of Paris memorabilia
Gloria Shelton with her Paris piece
artist with collaged fabric pieces
Gloria with three of her monochromatic color schemes holding her pansy
artist with stitched pansy in pink and purple threads
Gloria’s lovely pansy stitched with silk thread

Gloria LOVES pansies and does a wonderful job of stitching them in a variety of ways.

Here I am with My Secret Garden…

artist next to framed garden scene
My Secret Garden

Here is a closer view.

mixed media piece of a garden scene
My Secret Garden
closeup of sunflower area
Closeup of sunflowers, crocosmia and foxglove

Here are the other pieces I had in the exhibition.

artist with 4 framed pieces
Myrtle, Hazel, Andy and Cattails

These were all constructed using a Print-to-Stitch method. I really learned a lot from making the three pieces of the people. These were made from old black and white photos taken in the 1920’s of my grandmother, mother, and grandfather.

Myrtle (My maternal grandmother. AKA Gram)

woman in a burgundy dress
Myrtle
Myrtle original photo

Hazel (My mom)

Hazel
Hazel original photo

Andy (My maternal grandfather. AKA Dedaddy)

Andy
man standing on planks
Andy original photo

I have two more photos that I would like to add to these three. Hopefully someday I will get them completed and framed as well.

 

Hazel on bike
man and woman standing
Andy and Myrtle

I am blessed to live on a small lake. These cattails are in front of my property. This time of year, the red winged blackbirds are nesting in this area and it’s fun to see them blowing in the wind while they are hanging onto the reeds.

Cattails
Cattails original photo

The exhibition has been a wonderful way to showcase our current work done over the last 3+ years of study with Gail (and Penny). I hope you get an opportunity to visit the exhibition while it is at the museum. I hope you enjoyed the “tour”!

Happy creating!

Tesi Vaara

 

 

Mega-Stega March Break Sampling

Mega-Stega March Break Sampling

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March 2026 has been busy with Guild library work, questionable weather (is it spring yet? It must be spring, I feel so ill (stupid snow mould allergy), no, it’s snowing again). There was a bit of needle felting. There was even my birthday, I had forgotten to have one last year with all the anaesthetic (but math caught up to me on this one, so I am older than I originally thought).

walker seat is piled with 3 large clear bags of wool and a large zipper bag with more wool, and the camera bag.1.1) Arriving at the guild with my trusty vehicle, laden down with fibre, camera, and cookie.

This month, we had a chance to have a mid-week felting day in the local guild studio during the March school break. We had a few of the local felters (Wet and Dry) drop in for part or all of the day. We each had our own projects, and it was fun to do them together. We chatted and it was great to have others to discuss our projects with.   Ann had a sculptural project using differential shrinkage, and I returned to the Mega-stegosaurus-bag, this time it would be a bit less mega (smaller) but remain Stega.

My goal was to figure out the correct size for the pattern and do a bit of sampling to make a final decision on colours.

Ann and I discussed more of the mechanics for the legs. When I put the bag down, I want it to stand on its own. Who wants a stegosaurus that falls over? Originally, I was going to put large wooden dowels in the legs and a base inside the bag. This would make the legs wool on the outside with a wooden centre.  While chatting with Ann, we discussed removing the hollow legs and making the wood legs a feature, showing them.

I had planned a wooden base to hold the legs, but I can adjust this to the new plan. It will give a strong attachment site and keep the bottom of the bag flat.

Diagram showing bad drawing of stegasurus bag with wooden block legs and wooden base inside the bag2.1) Diagram of the side view of Mega-Stega leg design with four separate leg blocks

Since I want to have Mega-Stega stand when put down, he or she will need 4 legs screwed into the wooden base inside the bag. I may have to add 2 screws per leg to keep the legs from rotating or unscrewing. If I want to have fewer screws, I can use a block with a carved groove to represent the 2 front legs and another block to represent the 2 back legs.

front vew of mega-stega bag, with 2 options for legs2.2) Front view of Mega-Stega bag with separate legs vs 2 carved blocks representing 2 adjacent legs

paper pattern with extention for belly2.3) Dropping legs and adding belly to the general shape of Stegosaurus

floor underlay pattern with adjustment in size and angle of neck2.4) Ann suggested changing the angle of the neck and lengthening the tail.

Since I will need a way to get into the bag, I am considering the evil zipper. I am not fond of sewing zippers. I have done it before, but most of what I enjoy sewing are historical costumes, which don’t have them.

Because of the shape of Mega-Stega, having a head/neck end and a tail end, I have the option of making a pocket in each space or stuffing them to make them firm appendages. I also have the option of adding a partial armature so I can curl the head and or tail so it will hug the body rather than stick out in front of or behind. I will think about this more as I work through the rest of the design.

Ann reminded me that I should expand my pattern, but not as much as the last one. As you saw above, we removed the legs and added more belly to allow the belly to flatten to create the bottom of the bag.

Ann with her multipart resist sitting on table in the studio.3.1) Ann helped me create the floor underlay resist shape.

As you already know, a Stegosaurus has 2 rows of large plates running adjacent to the spine, and spikes at the end of its tail.

When I was in kindergarten, I got up very early (6 am) on Saturday mornings in the hopes that the TV would be showing the Palaeontology lectures from the University of the Air. (I was disappointed if the Math or English courses played.) One of the best classes had a gest Geologist discussing a new discovery: blood vessels in the plates of Stegosaurus. He suggested that this suggested that the plate might be a cooling system, which was unnecessary in cold-blooded creatures. By the time my parents woke up, I was finished with dinosaurs and was happily watching cartoons.

A year later, in grade 1, when the teacher said all dinosaurs are cold-blooded, I asked about Stegosaurus’ plates. She didn’t know what a stegosaurus was. Ah, yes, I see the problem! Adults don’t get up until after 7 am on Saturdays, so she must have missed the cool University lectures.

I will add plates, but I need to inset them slightly down the body, so I will have space to add the zipper.

mega-stega resist and ann's multi part resist3.2) Considering plate locations. Ann’s multi-part resist is on the other side of the table.

close up of positioning plates3.3) close up of plate location considerations

I want to give the suggestion of the flushing colours that a blood vessel system might have.  I dug through my bag of red/orange. I have this braid of BFL/Silk, and I have a small amount of pure silk in a similar colourway.

BFL braid in Orange red and yellow4.1) Blue Faced Leicester (BFL) and silk 100 gr in shades from yellow through orange into red

I had considered a white base layer. Let’s make a sample.

Sampleing white wool base with red/orange/yellow overlay4.2) Sampling over white wool

I found a bag of fibre that I thought was Corriedale. Whatever the fibre was, it seemed a bit spongy rather than firm as it felted.  Hummm. That is not quite what I wanted in either the firmness or colour.

Let me try again. I have a half bump of black, it may be Merino. Why is it not labelled? I used the plate shapes I had cut out of the floor underlay as a template. I don’t need them to be hollow, so I don’t need to add a resist to the plate.

I lay out the shape in many thin layers of black, then added wisps of yellow, orange, and Red BFL/Silk. I then flipped the plate and put the top colours on the other side.

black wool under layer with same colour blend that was used over the white wool in the previous picture4.3) sample on black wool

Yes, that is more what I was thinking. Essence of blushing blood vessels! I made more samples in the various plate sizes I had cut out. I tried to leave the bottom part loose so I can attach it to the body eventually.

4 samples of the plates in black under wool4.4) Samples of pates

I will have to make more, but this is a good beginning.   I like the colours with the black under layer. I should be able to trim the tip on the one that is a bit messy.

samples and resists used as templates4.5) samples and templates for the plate

I now have a colour scheme, a pattern which I think will work, and samples at least some of which I should be able to use. Now I just need a bit of free time and table space to try to create my Mega –Stega bag.

I will have to put this aside for a little while, as I finish the preparations for a new workshop I will be giving next week. I hope to show you more progress in the near future, have fun and keep felting.

Felted Vessel Workshop

Felted Vessel Workshop

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A few weeks ago, I taught a felted vessel class. A lovely bunch of ladies full of enthusiasm. As usual, I didn’t take as many pictures as I wanted, but here you can see the setup.

After everyone had their base ready, people got to work on embellishments. This is the hardest part, but also the most fun for most people. So many choices of wool and silk. They have to think about where they will cut their felt to take the resist out, to open it up, how big they want the opening and whether they want a very round pot or a flattish one. Where is the top, and where is the bottom?

I didn’t take as many pictures as I wanted to,  so we jump to the end.

Two ladies decided to cut slits and make their vessels into small bags. They need to work on the edges some more.

And one lady decided to turn hers into two small bowls. One was turned inside out so you can see the pattern better.

 

All in all, I think they did very well having never felted before, I don’t think any of them had ever handled fibre before.

 

Christina, Ruth, Penny, Gail, Moira and Nancy at the Pacific Northwest Quilt & Fiber Arts Museum
Where Art Meets Embroidery

Where Art Meets Embroidery

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The exhibition Where Art Meets Embroidery is currently on display at the Pacific Northwest Quilt and Fiber Art Museum (QFA) in LaConner, Washington USA through May 31st. The exhibit, for me, is the culmination of 16 years of classes that I have taken at the Gail Harker Center for Creative Arts. The exhibition includes work from both Level 3 and 4 textile art graduates. My post is about the Level 4 Experimental Stitch and Multimedia, including my work and my classmates. Tesi will be posting at the end of the month about the Level 3 Experimental Stitch student’s work.

Tables set up with working notebooks and other samples by students at the Garden Center

When the exhibition opened, we had a concurrent show for the first couple of days that was across the street from the quilt museum. In this part of the exhibition, participating students filled their tables with working notebooks, samples and pieces of artwork that didn’t end up in the exhibition at the quilt museum. Visitors could sit down and browse through the documentation of the process that most people never see with completed works of art. The working notebooks show the thought process, the inspiration behind the ideas and the work that goes into creating a large work of textile art.

Working notebooks and samples by Ruth Lane

Here’s a part of the set up for my space showing a variety of notebooks, samples and smaller stitch pieces. My theme is about the spirituality of trees. It was really interesting to talk to visitors about the process and how some of my pieces were created.

Samples and working notebooks by Nancy Drake

This is part of Nancy Drake’s table showing a couple of notebooks, some canvas work boxes and a flower that wasn’t included in the other exhibition. Nancy’s theme is about nature, leaves and trees.

Samples and working notebooks by Christina Fairley Erickson

Here is one of Christina Fairley Erickson’s tables showing some of her Advanced Research in Art and Design. Christina’s theme is about animals of all kinds. The large tall piece in the back is based on a giraffe (if you hadn’t figured that out already).

Signage for the exhibition at the Pacific Northwest Quilt and Fiber Art Museum

Now on to the exhibition at the QFA Museum. If you are in the northwest Washington area, I hope you will get a chance to visit the exhibition in the next couple of months. I will be showing only a couple of pieces of work from each student. There is much more to see at the museum.

Christina Fairley Erickson standing by her horse head sculpture

Each student created a “large” artwork as part of the course curriculum. This is Christina Fairley Erickson in front of her machine stitched horse sculpture. Christina has traveled many times to Turkey to visit part of her family and the floral designs on the horse are based on Turkish inspiration.

Here are a couple of detail shots of Christina’s amazing stitching that has been turned into a lifesize horse head.

Two framed stitch pieces of bird eyes by Christina Fairley Erickson

Another portion of Christina’s studies were based on eyes of birds and animals. These are two of her stitched pieces of an Indian Peacock Eye and a Military Macaw Eye.

Artwork by Moira Gutteridge Kloster on the wall at the exhibition

Moira Gutteridge Kloster grew up in East Africa and based her theme on remembrances of her childhood as well as recent visits to the area. Moira mainly works with photos printed on fabric which she transforms with stitch.

Two African women in a stitched portrait by Moira Gutteridge Kloster

This is a closer view of one of her pieces from the wall shot above.

Black work lizard by Moira Kloster

This is a detail of Moira’s blackwork lizard. These blackwork patterns are a way to create various values to give the stitching more depth.

Framed artwork of a papaya and of a collage of elephants by Moira Gutteridge Kloster

 

Moira has many photos taken in Africa. The one on the left is based on a papaya and the one on the right is all photos of elephants (and one of my favorites, the elephant footprints).

Forest Floor by Lynette Barnes - stitched and felted textile piece

Lynette Barnes created ‘Forest Floor’ with a variety of machine needle felting, hand dyeing, machine embroidery, burning, fusing and fraying. Her theme is the Pacific Coast Forest Floor.

Here’s a closer view of a couple of small areas on this almost five foot wide piece.

Framed goldwork leaves/tree by Nancy Drake

Nancy Drake’s theme was based on the natural world, specifically leaves and trees. The piece above is created with metal and gold threads.

Goldwork by Nancy Drake

A closer view of the stitchwork and metal elements reveals the abundance of color variety in the metal threads.

Nanci also created this tabard, developing the pattern, hand stitching the design and then machine stitching the garment together. (In the video of my talk at the end of the post, you will see Nanci’s tabard and her hanging leaf sculpture, on either side of me.)

Two portraits of tree spirits by Ruth Lane

My theme about the spirituality of trees, led me to develop a series of tree spirits. These are two of the stitched portraits that I created. The top one is machine stitched over layers of tulle. The bottom piece was created from nuno felting a printed photo on sheer fabric of one of my original paintings and then adding hand stitch.

Ruth standing beside The Forgotten One

The majority of my time spent over the last two years was creating this ten foot tall tree spirit called ‘The Forgotten One’. His outer layers were made with silk, wool and tea bags that were nuno felted and then hand stitched into place on the inner structure. The sculpture comes apart into four pieces so that I could travel back and forth from Montana to Washington with it.

Here are a couple of closer photos to see the face and the texture of the sculpture.

On the first Saturday after the exibition opened, an artist talk took place at the QFA museum. Each student talked about their work, inspiration and theme. The video above is my talk and Gail showing photos of my work.

I hope you enjoyed this peek at our exhibition. If you’re in the area, please stop by and see it in person.