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The Rhythm of Autumn

The Rhythm of Autumn

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The Rhythm of Autumn is a felted mixed media piece that I made several years ago. At the time I was making it, I thought I might do a tutorial on the process so I took a lot of process photos. It originally was going to be cut up and made into covers for various small kitchen appliances such as a toaster cover or a cover for a mixer. Once it was partially completed, I changed my mind in mid stream. So it ended up being a wall hanging. The final piece measures almost four feet across by 2 1/2 feet wide. Due to all the changes I made in the original plan, it took over a year to complete.

 

This is the original layout. I think I used mixed 56’s wool but actually I can’t remember for sure. I partially felted the piece into prefelt.

 

Then I wrapped the prefelt around some rusty pipes to rust dye it. The prefelt was wet and presoaked in vinegar water.

 

Then I put the rolled up bundle in a pail of salt water and covered it with a plastic bag. I left it for two weeks to rust.

Here it is after two  weeks.

 

This is the entire piece.The sad part was that a lot of this luscious color washed out with the subsequent felting.

 

I added fabric  leaves cut out of commercial fabrics. These  were too heavy a fabric to nuno felt so I  stitched them on. I was originally  planning to machine sew them on but that proved impossible. So I  ended up hand stitching them down. That took a while.

Here’s a closer view after stitching and felting.

 

I had also added some silk bits prior to felting.

 

Here’s the entire piece after felting. I decided not to cut it up at this point but was unsure what to do with it.

 

This was an idea of adding more interest by putting darker lines through the piece with machine stitching. I used yarn to mark the lines through the piece.

 

I did end up cutting along the yarn lines and adding dark wool in the space between the  cut pieces of felt.

 

I covered the lines with water-soluble fabric and pinned it all in place.

 

Then I machine stitched a “pebble” design over the cut areas making sure that I stitched over the felt edges. The stitching would now hold the cut pieces together. Once it was all stitched, I washed out the water-soluble fabric.

 

Unfortunately, at this point, I had given up the idea of doing a tutorial so I don’t have a photo of the piece after all the machine stitching was completed. I wasn’t happy with the result and left the project uncompleted for a while. Then I took it to my local fiber group and Bunny suggested that I crumple the entire piece, stitch and stuff as needed to hold it in place and then make it a wall hanging. The photo above shows the mesh I used to back the piece. It is usually used for rug hooking. I crumpled the piece until I got the shapes I wanted, stuffed some areas with extra wool and pinned it all in place. I then hand stitched on the back side to hold everything together and stitched the mesh in place.

 

Here you can see some of the stuffed areas on the back.

 

Here is the finished piece. I ended up covering the mesh on the back with acrylic felt and applying a “quilt sleeve” for hanging. I guess the moral of the story is to never give up. That piece of felt you don’t like all that much can be turned into something entirely different!

 

 

Australia Challenge

Australia Challenge

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I have been busy trying to get all my stitch homework done but was able to combine stitch homework with this quarter’s challenge. We are working on machine embroidery and are looking at others work who do machine embroidery. Then we are supposed to try to work in their style. I have always admired Annemeike Mein’s sculptural textiles and since she’s from Australia, I thought it would be a good match. I haven’t been able to find a website for her but there is information here about her work. If you scroll down to the bottom of the page, there are several links that show photos of her work. Or just google images under her name.

I decided that I would try developing a three-dimensional stitched bottle brush. So I found some photos online and looked at the various parts of the flower.

I did a bit of sketching and wished that I had a live plant to look at. It’s much harder to really see what something looks like and how the structure is formed from a photo. But since we don’t have bottle brush in Montana, I had to go with what I had.

I then started thinking about how I could stitch the various parts, what color fabrics and threads I would need and how it would all be put together. So in the bottom right of this page are a couple of stitched samples. There are two little buds and then a flower stem. It didn’t turn out very three-dimensional and would need some additional parts to work. I was happy with the buds though.

Next came thinking about how to do the leaves. I started with a heavy cotton and then spent a long, frustrating ten minutes trying to turn the leaf right side out. I failed. So then I tried a piece of felt. It worked fine but looked artificial and didn’t give the flexibility that I was trying to achieve. So then I tried lighter weight fabrics. Those worked much better and I ended up liking the “turban cloth” cotton the best.

Next, it was time to think about a stem. I could do a long tube of fabric, turn it right side out and then stuff it. But after the leaf experience, I wanted to see if there was a different way. I have made a lot of machined cords and thought that might work. What if I used a pipe cleaner and stitched over it like a cord? I didn’t have any green pipe cleaners so I used a red one. It did work to stitch over it and the stem would be flexible, positionable and sturdy. However, it is really hard. I’m not sure I would be able to hand sew on all the little buds and flowers. So the next step will be to try the long tube of fabric and see how that will work as the stem.

Believe it or not, this process has already taken me about four hours of work. Having not done much three-dimensional stitching, I have to figure out what works and want doesn’t. I have learned a lot already and I’m going to keep plugging along with the process.

Have you made anything for our Australia challenge? We’d love to see it if you have.

The Final Pear

The Final Pear

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I have been busily machine stitching to finish my class homework. We are supposed to try out various methods and techniques of machine embroidery. On my personal blog, I posted the first two pears. One was done with granite stitch with instructions from a 1945 Singer sewing machine book. The second was done with mossing stitch learned from an article by Ken Smith.

 

This last pear was done using Carol Shinn’s technique from her book Freestyle  Machine Embroidery. She usually uses a digital photo printed on fabric and then affixes that to a heavy  canvas. The canvas is cut on the bias to prevent excessive distortion. I decided to paint my pear instead of using a photograph. The photo above shows my painted pear. I used acrylic paint for the pear and Dye-Na-Flow paint for the background.

 

I haven’t used her technique for a while and I always forget how much the piece shrinks in one direction. Because all the stitches are done in the same direction, the piece shrinks in the direction of the stitching. This is the first layer of stitching that I did. I stitched vertically. You can see that the pear is getting shorter already.

 

Here’s the finished pear. It hardly even looks like a pear shape it shrunk down so much. I guess I should have stitched horizontally since it was already a bit squatty for a pear. Comparing all three techniques was interesting. Carol Shinn’s technique was actually the shortest stitching time. But obviously you must take the shrinkage factor in to consideration. If you want to see the other two pears, check out my post here.