Nuno Felt Experiments for the Studio Challenge

Posted on June 18, 2013 by

Every quarter on the forum we do a challenge.  
http://feltandfiberstudio.proboards.com/thread/622/second-quarter-challenge
  I thought I better get on with it myself before the challenge runs out. I challenged people to try nuno felting or to try it on something they hadn’t before. I decided to try some fabrics that I wasn’t sure would work, to see what would happen. There are lots of pictures. I did shrink them so I hope they don’t overwhelm anyone’s computer connection.

For all the pieces I used merino wool in a contrasting colour so I could see how the wool migrated better.

The first is  a polyester knit that is like t-shirt material. It feels a lot like cotton.

poly knit

this is what it finished like. It worked really well. I think because it is a soft knit the fabric fibers could easily move out of the way letting the wool through.

polly knit felted polly knit felted cloce

This one is from a poly knit dress more like the polyester we used to wear in the 70′s.

polyester dress

It worked fairly well but it is heavier material and the wool didn’t come through as much.

poly dress felted poly dress felted close

These next two are different sides of the same silk fabric cut from a woven silk jacket. it was a pretty little jacket but small and out of date. The texture of the fabric is great, quite 3 dimensional. This is the right side.

silk jacket right side

silk jacket right side felted 1silk jacket right side felted close

I think it worked really well.

This is the wrong side.

silk jacket wrong side

It didn’t felt as well, I do not know why the fiber would not travel through fabric as well in this direction but as you can see not nearly as much wool migrated to the top.

silk jacket wrong side felted silk jacket wrong side felted close

Lastly is a mystery fabric. it is cut from a blouse. Both sewn into the seam together. one said 100% silk and the other said 100% polyester.

maybe silk

It did work very well but you can’t see its shine much at all. You do see it more in person.

maybe silk feltedmaybe silk felted close

There is still time to join in the challenge. Try something new or show us something old you tried that worked or didn’t. I think the failures or things that went sideways are sometimes the most interesting.

Posted in Challenges, Nuno Felting, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 10 Comments

An Old Piece and a New Piece

Posted on June 16, 2013 by

I only realised yesterday when I started to plan my blog post, that all my photos are still on my old hard drive. I was looking for another felt scrap piece that I recently started on when I came across a piece I made quite a while ago which I never posted about. If any of it looks familiar, it’s because I used it for the banners for the studio site and the forum :)
I wanted to make a piece with colours and textures inspired by the natural colours of the landscapes between Manchester and West Yorkshire. I used lots of different coloured natural wools and wool tops: Merino, Bluefaced Leicester, Manx Loaghtan, Zwartble, Black Welsh Mountain, Jacob, Gotland. I also used raw gotland locks and Lincoln locks.
OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAI mostly used mid to dark shades of wool and animal fibre, there’s some sandy coloured Alpaca in here too.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAFor texture I used some wool nepps.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAAnd also some silk noil, I added a lot of this so it would look like a solid band.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERATo create a kind of mossy/spongey moorland type grass look, I blended some plastic fibre with some natural shades and  green shades of merino.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAI was really pleased with the way it turned out, especially the shape, I wanted an organic shape because I thought this suited it better.
I did find the scrap piece that I was working on, I think this will be the outside of a notebook cover.

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Posted in natural wools, Wet Felting, Wool | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 12 Comments

Finished Cuffs

Posted on June 14, 2013 by

This week has been a snatch a little felting here and there week. The cuffs dried out twice before they where ready to have the marbles added.

I use elastics for doing braids in horse manes and tales to put the marbles into the felt.

cuffs with marbles 1 cuffs with marbles 2

After they are dry its time to cut the tops off and pop out the marbles.

cuffs with marbles 3cuffs finished 2

 
After I cut the marbles out of this one with the silk on the back it didn’t look right. You cant see the silk inside.

cuffs finished

So I cut the blobs down farther to open them up more and now you can see the silk

cuffs finished 4

Here are all three finished.

cuffs finished 3

They are quit big.

cuffs on 1 cuffs on 2

I pulled the corners on one side of each end to make it cover a lot of area, mostly to see what it would look like. I like it.

 

 

 

Posted in Design, Nuno Felting, Prefelt, Uncategorized, Wet Felting | Tagged , , , , , , | 15 Comments

Growing Roots and a Bit of Ground

Posted on June 12, 2013 by

I have been continuing to work on my exhibition piece and it is getting closer to being finished. I started with felting a bunch of rocks, then ground to cover the base and last I made roots. Now I just have to put them all together, sew on the nuno felt to the umbrella and finish up the details.

Felted RocksThe rocks went pretty quickly, I used a variety of grays, black, browns, tans and greenish/browns. Even a little bit of red. The rocks in Montana are a variety of colors.

Lay out under treeNext up, I laid out the wool around the base. I wanted to felt it right around the trunk so it there would be no seam. I’m sure I could have done a piece of pre-felt but decided just to felt it right in place.

Wetting it down

 

Here it is being wet down. I had the felted rocks on top of the wool but decided they would have to come off or everything wouldn’t felt properly.

All Felted

 

Here it is drying in the sun after it was completely felted. I did have a bit of shifting of the surface “earth colored” wool but that will most be covered up by rocks, roots and other finishing details.

Soft rootsNext up was making some spikes for roots. Here they are after dry felting and rolling on the “Turbo Felting Board”. This board really works great for making cords. You can use stair tread that they sell at hardware stores as a substitute.

Felted rootsHere are the roots after felting down. I didn’t harden them up because they need to be shaped once they get attached to the tree.

Around the trunkHere’s the entire tree with the roots just laid down. It almost looks finished now!

Needle FeltingNext up was a little needle felting to shape the roots and attach them to the trunk.

More like a rootAh… that looks more root like.

Partially FinishedI got two roots started on the needle felting process. I am still going to add some padding underneath the “earth” and glue it down so it won’t be shifting around if someone touches it. So it is getting there. I am happy with how it is turning out.

I also thought you might like to see part of my inspiration for this piece. A poem by Karen Shragg:

Think Like a Tree

Soak up the sun
Affirm life’s magic
Be graceful in the wind
Stand tall after a storm
Feel refreshed after it rains
Grow strong without notice
Be prepared for each season
Provide shelter to strangers
Hang tough through a cold spell
Emerge renewed at the first sign of spring
Stay deeply rooted while reaching for the sky
Be still long enough to hear your own leaves rustling

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Posted in Needle Felting, Wet Felting | Tagged , , | 24 Comments

Computer Problems and Fimo

Posted on June 10, 2013 by

I mentioned in my last post that I’d started working on a Fimo tutorial. I thought I’d have it finished now, but it hasn’t been as easy as I thought. After all the nice cloudy stormy days that weren’t great for photos we’ve had about 2 weeks of non stop sunshine, and when I say non stop, I mean about 17 very long, hot hours a day :(   I never have much luck with photos at this time of year as it is, the light isn’t sharp like in winter, but for some reason it seems even softer than usual. I ended up re-doing my photos about 4 times.
Then my computer died. It temporarily revived for a few days and I managed to copy all my photos onto dvds. I’d started on the editing when it died for good about a week ago. I managed to borrow a computer for a few days, so I did manage to organise the  2,000+ photos into folders and start sorting through them at least. I set my new computer up over the weekend, took about 2 days to find out where things are hidden (Windows 8, I thought Vista was bad!) and made a start on writing the tutorial and lightening and cropping the final photos.
This was the piece I showed part of last time, that I dropped the camera on, it has been baked.
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I had some spare pieces of clay left over from the demonstration pieces so I had a play around and made a few things just for myself. This is a pendant, it’s resting on a glass pebble to catch the light.
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I used some of the leftover pieces together to make multi coloured pieces, this is a heart shaped button.

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I made quite a few buttons, you never know when you might need one, I might have to do a few more though, I have a pile of purses that would look good with buttons made to match.

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What projects have you been working on lately?

Posted in Tutorials | Tagged , , , | 15 Comments

Felt Cuffs in Progress

Posted on June 8, 2013 by

This week I am working on a few cuffs. These will have bubbles in them so they have to start out really long as when I put the marbles in them to get the bubbles they shrink fast.

These are made with commercial prefelt.  Then some silk offcuts from other projects and some throwsters waist

cuffs ready 1 cuffs ready 2 cuffs ready 3 cuffs ready 6

The bottom right picture is the back side of one of these. It is covered in silk throwsters waist. The silk will show up inside the bubbles.

The back ground is prefelt and  a green batt  cut  with my rotary cutter to get the nice neat rectangles. There is throwsters waist and some blue faced leicester curls that I dyed.

cuffs ready 4 cuffs ready 5

Next I wanted to try something different.

cuffs ready 7

The red is a thick piece of prefelt form an other experiment. It wouldn’t stay folded over the curls until after it was wet down but I forgot to take a picture of it. I added some throwsters waist onto the top after I folded it.

Can you tell I was in the mood for throwsters waist?  I do love how it shines and goes all curly. The next time it’s my turn to blog I hope to have them done so I can show you how they turned out.

Posted in Design, Nuno Felting, Prefelt, Wet Felting, Wool | Tagged , , , , , , | 8 Comments

Progress on My Shelter Exhibition Piece

Posted on June 6, 2013 by

I made some progress on my exhibition piece with the theme of Shelter. If you don’t follow  my Permutations in Fiber blog, you might have missed the post about felting the umbrella. Take a quick look at that post first and this one will make more sense. I showed you the green nuno felt that I made for Ann’s challenge and it got put to good use.

Pattern for Cutting

This was the scary part, cutting up the two pieces of nuno felt that I made. I was unsure if I really had enough fabric. I needed four triangles all together. The red pattern piece is the original fabric from the umbrella. I decided to let the bottom edges be uneven to make my tree less uniform.

Cutting Green Nuno FeltHere is the first piece cut into four sections. They were definitely not all the same size but I decided not to stress about perfection as it wouldn’t be that noticeable later. I also cut up the second piece of nuno felt into four triangles.

Umbrella Tree

Then I sewed all eight pieces together.  And put it on my felted umbrella frame. It is not stitched down to the frame yet because I still need to felt the base of the tree and make roots for it. I will save the stitching down of the “leaves” until last.

Umbrella Tree Closer ViewHere’s a little closer view. I really like the different textures and colors of green.

Underneath the ShelterBut this is actually my favorite view. I love seeing the light come through the thinner parts of the nuno felt, the felted branches and being under the “shelter”. Next part to work on is roots and covering the base.

Posted in Nuno Felting | Tagged , , | 13 Comments