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Month: February 2013

New Blog

New Blog

Comments 10 comments

Well i know i mentioned this on the forum but as i’ve havent done much else but try to get into my blog ive finally given it up and started making a new one. I’m actually quite happy to be doing this as i’ve had so much trouble in the past that i believe someone or something was trying to tell me something . Get a new Blog, so i have !! New Blog for New Creations and of course a New Name, although maybe i should have not stayed with blogger ???  we’ll see what happens ,

I’d love for you to take a look although its not finished yet and i’d be more than happy if you added yourselves to my friends list and followed along, i’m slowly adding in the blogs i’ve been following but thats going to take some time as i did have a lot !!!!

I dont have any show and tell other than  this right now  but i did just want to apologise to my blogging friends, i wasnt ignoring anyone i just couldnt work my blog, i’ve also had a pretty sick hubby but after a little spell in hospital is doing really well and back at work, fingers crossed he stays that way 🙂

Oh i almost forgot, its a bit bright so before you click, better grab your sunny’s lol  Well i needed some color !!!

http://fibrenmixedmedia.blogspot.com.au/

The Felting and Fiber Forum

The Felting and Fiber Forum

Comments 15 comments

I’ve had a lot of really nice comments and support recently since I published my book. One thing I noticed from the comments on the giveaway was how many people are fairly new to felting or in particular nuno felting, and would love to learn more. Buying a book can certainly be a good way, and most of us have probably learned most of what we know through trial and error, but another good way is learning from each other… and other people’s trial and error 🙂

A great place to do this is a forum. A little over a year ago we posted about starting The Felting and Fiber Forum. We said how we really wanted more interaction with like-minded people to share our enthusiasm for felt, fabric and fibres. We hoped we would get a few members and get to see what people are working on and share tips and get advice. I don’t think I’m alone in feeling that it is far more than that. The forum is somewhere I really look forward to logging onto each morning, to see what new projects everyone is working on, see if there are new replies to posts asking for advice, reading about what new crafts or techniques have caught someone’s eye, finding out what the weather is like all around the world! (We get a lot of weather!) 🙂  I was going to say that it really has grown into a great community of fibre artists from all over the globe, but we’re not just members, we’re friends.

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It’d be really nice if we had even more artists in our community. I’ve been clicking to look at the blogs of recent commentors and there is such a wealth of talent, not just in felting, but all kinds of fibre art, mixed media, stitching and more. I know I’m not the only one who would be interested to know more about a wider range of fabric and fibre arts. And there are lots of members of the forum who would be more than happy to offer help, advice and support to those just starting out on their felting adventures. We even have a 12 step program for fibre addicts (1. Buy more fibre. 2. Buy more fibre 3…. Just kidding!)

The forum is open to everyone, just follow the link at the bottom of this post or click the forum button on the sidebar.  Once you’ve registered, we just have to ‘approve’ you… don’t worry, it’s just a measure to keep spammers out 🙂  The forum is free, which means it does get advert banners, but no one likes a forum full of annoying adverts, so…. we have a novel way of dealing with that… for $7 per month we can make the forum ad-free, so we replace the advert banner with one sponsored by our members which also redirects to their site. If you are interested just let us know. You don’t even have to be a member of the forum if you’d just like to support it while promoting your own blog, etsy store, website etc. but we would love it if you’d come over and join us 🙂

http://feltandfiberstudio.proboards.com/

Giveaway—Beyond Nuno PDF e-book

Giveaway—Beyond Nuno PDF e-book

Comments 126 comments

coverAs a big Thank You for all the support I’ve had since I started felting and blogging, I’m giving away a copy of my new PDF e-book called Beyond Nuno. It’s all about using different fabrics in wet felting, why and how they felt the way they do, how different effects are achieved etc. I hope to show that there’s more to nuno felting than just ruffled silk scarves and that it is possible to control the outcome of nuno felting. For more details you can read the full blurb on Craftsy or my blog.

You don’t need to do anything special to enter, just leave a comment on this post. If you’d like to spread the word through your blog or facebook etc, it would be very much appreciated but it isn’t a requirement. I will randomly draw the winner 8 days from now on Monday 4th March 2013, so please check back to see if you’ve won and leave a comment on the announcement post so I can contact you with the download information.

compilation of pagesGood Luck!  🙂

This Giveaway is now closed, to see the winner, please click here.

A Little Stich Practice

A Little Stich Practice

Comments 16 comments

I finally put the free motion embroidery foot on my Sewing Machine.  I did a small sample to see what different movements did.  I used contrasting thread so I could see what I had done better. As you can see I did a few things. I tried to sew down some loopy yarn. this was hard. The yarn moves and you can’t really pin it very well. Its to easy to run the machine over the pins.

machine stitch sample

The solid red, with lots of stitching is a piece of silk  carrier rod. I tried moving the felt at different speeds and having the machine sew at different speeds.  Fast machine and slow hands seemed to work best so far. You can see near the end I was getting better at controlling what I was doing and managed to write my name. I like the way the stitching looks on the tree best, well the green part anyway.

Here is a shot at the back side.

machine stitch sample back

The machine stitching looks so different than hand stitching. I think the combination of the two will be great. But for now I need to practice my machine stitching. Anyone have any tips or suggestions about machine stitching?

Using Your Studio Journal – Part Two

Using Your Studio Journal – Part Two

Comments 12 comments

Have you been using your journal? Have you tried anything new? Here are a few more ideas.

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Paste inspirational paintings beside your to do lists.

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Sketch a rock or shell. Try out black gesso and cover with colored pencil.

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Cut up strips of black paper and make a design. Paste it in the journal.

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If you use paper towels when you’re dying, save them and paste them into your journal. Add more paint as desired.

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Make a collage with various paper or even strips of fabric , add writing, stamps or stencils or paint.

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Paste in inspirational photos and consider how you can use these in your work. Here I was thinking about three-dimensional shapes with machine embroidery.

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Paste in photos from nature and use those to sketch ideas for further design.

MINOLTA DIGITAL CAMERAHere I made a stamp from the butterfly wings inspiration. Add quotes that are meaningful to you.

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Visit a museum and “copy” a master’s work. Or find a photo of the master’s work online. Here is a watercolor sketch based on Van Gogh’s painting.

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Find different colors in pages of magazines and tear them out. Use those colors to transition from one color to another. Paste them into your journal. I did blue to yellow but choose anywhere on the color wheel.

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If you’re traveling, save brochures, tickets and other ephemera to paste into your journal. Add your thoughts or small sketches. The sketch/doodle in the top left corner was inspired by the tattoo on the neck of the woman in front of me.

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Make rough sketches of ideas for creating. I was thinking about what different shapes could be made from one resist.

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Look closely at items around you and sketch their shapes. These are pieces of bark I found on a walk one day.

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Occasionally a technique you try from a book really turns out better than you had ever expected.  I hope you’ll try some of these ideas in your journal. I really enjoy using mine and then I love to look back and get ideas from years past. All of the photos from these journals were from 3-4 years ago. But they are ideas that I could still use now. Some will develop and others won’t but it’s an excellent way to encourage your creativity.

Wool Supplies and Samples

Wool Supplies and Samples

Comments 24 comments

While I was laying out my white texture felt piece the other week, I had all my bags of white and light grey wools spread out on my floor, along with my stash of raw wool locks, so I thought I may aswell go ahead and do an inventory of my white wools, to see if I’m running low on any and need to order more. I usually keep a small stash of each wool breed (or colour) out in my felting boxes and put the rest away in my supplies bags and boxes, it makes it easier to have a large selection of breeds or colours to choose from without taking up as much room. These are the white wool tops, scoured and carded wools I most commonly use.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAMy favourite raw wool locks are Gotland, Teeswater and Wensleydale. There’s also some raw mohair locks here.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAAfter scribbling down the names of all the different wools I commonly use, I checked whether there was a good amount in my felting box and whether I was low in my supplies and needed to order more. This took a while, and it suddenly occured to me that if I made myself a document on Word, I could print it out any time I needed to do another stock check. It’s only taken me about 4 years of felting to think of that 🙂

WHITE WOOLS INVENTORY

A few years ago, I spotted some really inexpensive index card holders in our local supermarket. I thought they would be perfect to use for wool samples, so I bought a few and made myself a cover for one.

4635492385_23f0e04d9f_oI like to pull off a small sample of wool tops and staple it to the index card with the name of the shade or blend. I buy almost all of my supplies from World of Wool, but on the rare occasion I buy something elsewhere, I make a note of that too.

coloursIt’s really handy for natural wools too, the texture and staple length can be seen as well as the colour.

naturalsDo you have a system for storing your wools and fibres or keeping track if supplies are getting low? How about storage? I know that is always a favourite topic for fibre artists! 🙂

Around the web

Around the web

Comments 3 comments

felting around the web 4

http://www.megacrafty.com/2011/09/tip-easy-way-to-make-felted-balls.html

Inger’s Watermelon Slippers

stitching around the web

http://thatfuzzyfeelingsblog.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/my-new-sewing-machine-progress-report.html

Chain Stitched Jupiter Embroidery

Mr. Finch’s Stitched Moths, Animals and Other Insects

Knotted Feather Stitch Elephant

spinning around the web

http://www.liveinternet.ru/users/2964668/post113681387/ mostly Russian distaffs

Using Your Studio Journal – Part One

Using Your Studio Journal – Part One

Comments 12 comments

I use my studio journal for lots of different things and I thought some of you might be interested in seeing how I use it. I discussed some of the different uses in my last post so I thought I’d show you a bunch of different examples.

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Practice your lettering and fonts.

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Make a color wheel with paint, colored pencils or markers.

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Here’s another example of when I got new markers and pencils.

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This was a fun exercise. I used walnut ink and then tried marking with a variety of things such as a twig, a feather, a sharp rock and whatever else I could find around the house. It makes you realize that you can make marks with anything, it doesn’t necessarily have to be a pencil or paint brush.

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Document useful information that you find online. This is about using a value scale.

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Make little squares and then fill them up. The ones on the left are just doodles. the ones on the right are a study of values.

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Record useful information you find in library books. This is more information about design and value studies.

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Play with left over paint or dye. Whenever I have any color left over, I put it in my journal. Sometimes I just paint the page and then use that as a background. Other times, I leave the paint as a color study.

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Glue down rice paper in a different size pieces, let dry and then paint.

There are more ideas coming next week. Do you know of any fun “exercises” to try in your journal? I hope you have a wonderful Valentine’s Day!

Felt Boots Progress

Felt Boots Progress

Comments 12 comments

I have managed to  finish the first stage of my felt boots. They are now felted. You saw the tongues already. http://wp.me/p1WEqk-16m.

Next I had to make the loops so I will be able to lace up the boots.

loop barbells

First you make short ropes with fluffy ends

loops felted together

Then you have to felt them into another piece of felt. then I can cut them out to sew them onto the boots.

Then onto felting the boots.

resist on top

You do not wrap all the sides around the resist.

insert tongue

You have to insert the tongues.

boots cut apart

Here they are cut down the middle and you can see me working the back so there will be no ridge.

one boot shrunk

Here is one after fulling bedside the unshrunk boot.

finished stage one

and both boots done, on top of one half the resist.

leaves

I have started to make the embellishments.

Have you tried anything new lately?

Finished Texture Piece

Finished Texture Piece

Comments 13 comments

I mentioned in my last post that I’d finished my white texture piece that I’ve talked about recently.  Here is the photo from the last post of it all sewn up.  I finally managed to get a bright enough day to take a photograph.  With all of the locks it’s really quite big, so I had to take it outside and photograph it on a large piece of cardboard.  It’s roughly 16 inches x 11 inches, but the locks at the bottom are almost 11 inches long.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAI wanted to try something different, so when I laid it out I left a space in the centre without any wool then added a piece of cotton gauze after the second layer of wool.  It was here that I added the wool locks around the edges as well.  I then added another two layers of wool. The surface texture around the edge of the gauze is soybean top, a piece of cotton gauze and silk noil.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAIn this close-up, you can see a few wisps of wool have crept behind the gauze.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAThe wool locks all kept their shape really well and none of them tangled together.  The Angora, Wensleydale and Teeswater locks in this next photo show how nicely they turned out.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAI kept the whole texture piece soft and spongey by using wools like English 56s, Swaledale, Texel and Cheviot.  For surface texture I used cotton gauze, scoured Bluefaced Leicester and Wensleydale as seen in this photo.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAI also used Mohair, wool nepps, raw Gotland, Teeswater and Wensleydale locks, and embellishment fibres soybean top and silk noil.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAI’m really pleased with the way it turned out, especially the gauze panel in the centre.  Doing this piece has given me some good ideas for future projects.